Exile #2 wanted to know if these insect eggs were something that she should urgently remove from the tomato plants before they hatched into something that would damage the crop.
but - surprise - they are not eggs and they are not on the tomato plant.
What you're seeing is a large caterpillar - probably a tomato hornworm covered in tiny paper wasp cocoons. The hornworm is barely alive at this point having been eaten alive by the tiny larvae of the wasp that have now formed the cocoons. It's a bit easier to make out the caterpillar in this photo (in particular you can see two of its feet on the stem near the cocoons):
So, we left it all alone for the tiny beneficial wasps to hatch and hopefully help to save some more plants from the voracious caterpillars another day.
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