Wash the cocoons off the shrub. Perhaps spray it with some solvent and rinse it off with a water jet? Or remove it in some other way without damaging the shrub.

I would pull them off since the ones here are pretty well fastened on. A photo would be nice to get more concrete suggestions.

Any chance of a picture? I'd like to see what you're talking about since I don't get sticky cocoons on things here.

wash of your hands.. since you know they are sticky.. or off some plant???

==>>>TYPO ...

since you know they are sticky ... are you asking about washing them off your hands... or off a plant ....

we need the ID .. for specific advice ... a start might be.. what plant.. if it happens to be a common pest ... what if any damage are they doing to the plant ...

no.. no solvents sprayed on plants ... sorry about that..

there was a time when i went nuclear on every little bug...and then i morphed into not really caring about a little leaf damage ... as pest plagues come and go.. over the years ... and many simply transform into whatever .. and are gone in a few days/weeks ...

of course.. there are plagues that require some action ... and that is what we need to figure out ... before we go full contact smackdown ... imo ...

ken

I already took the main body of the cocoons off the shrub, carefully with wooden sticks, I don't touch yucky cocoons with my fingers. However, the main body attaches itself to the shrub with some sticky stuff, that's exactly what I want to get rid of.

There has to be something that wholesale growers of flowering shrubs etc use in their operations. Also stuff used in silk production, perhaps.

Sure it's not a praying mantis egg case?

Google Image says no.

A broadly applicable removal method would be helpful.

So, what did Google tell you they were?

Could not identify, ID is also not the focus.

Please focus on broad methods of removal, thanks!

“There has to be something that wholesale growers of flowering shrubs etc use in their operations. Also stuff used in silk production, perhaps.”

I don’t imagine that there is a broadly applicable removal method that won’t damage the plant. IME from living next door to a commercial sod and tree nursery, what wholesale growers use is preventative pesticides rather than removal of pests after the fact. I never went into their tree fields without seeing dated warning signs telling when the blocks of plants were last sprayed. In silk production, the goal isn’t a pretty shrub, it’s silk, so in general, the silk worms are fed cut leaves or branches and the shrub resprouts.

I typically use needle nose pliers on caterpillars I don’t want to handle, and putting on a soft cloth glove over a medical glove on the other hand would allow you to rub off much of the remains at the same time.

Well, no preventive method is 100%, there has to be corrective methods to complement prevention. It's the corrective methods that is of interest here.

Silk production would also like to remove as much of the cocoon as possible, same object here.

The above two paragraphs was to stimulate the discussion, but I really like to focus on the real issue of getting rid of the remaining sticky stuff that the main body of the cocoon (already removed) uses to attach itself to the shrub.

It's not possible to rub off sticky stuff.

Any chance of a picture? How big are they? How much of the shrub are they attached to? Is it possible to cut out the part they're on?

Update after a hot day: some of the sticky stuff dried, surprisingly not into a solid substance, but into a fluffy stuff. The fluffy stuff is shaped like a band that wraps around the stem of the shrub. The band of the fluffy stuff has inclusions, i.e. it is not particularly clean looking. The drier, the fluffier the consistency and the less sticky the band. It appears that the cocoon secures itself not only by sticking to the stem of the shrub but also by wrapping the sticky band around the stem of the shrub.

The good thing is that I recognize those fluffy bands from the past, but I saw them in far fewer numbers than in the present case which is merely a mild infestation. I gather that with longer drying time, the fluffy bands become even fluffier and even less sticky so that wind and rain drops would knock them off the shrub (the bands, either in the moist sticky state or in the dry fluffy state are not soluble in water).

So, the remains of the cocoons will disappear by themselves over time if you can live with the somewhat unclean look until then. If you can't, then it is not difficult to remove the remains manually. In particular, the dry band hangs together and each one can be individually removed as a whole. I am not for generalizations.

I am sure that butterfly lovers will find me weird, but no worry, I find them weird rejoicing over cocoons in their shrubs :-)