Corn earworm (CEW) is an annual pest of sweet corn in most of the Northeastern US and requires multiple applications of insecticides to manage below a threshold level. It is commonly believed that CEW do not oviposit (i.e., lay eggs) on sweet corn silks after they have dried. If true, insecticide treatments could logically cease at some predetermined time interval after pollination, because silks commence drying within hours of pollination. Problematic however, is that neither conventional wisdom, nor the historical literature, precisely defines the point at which silks are sufficiently dry to become unattractive for oviposition. We hypothesized that CEW cease to oviposit on silks that are 50% dried.