Interesting case here in the county submitted by a sharp eyed gardener.  Canes presented with distributions of an unusual white, roundish mass.  In the photos below notice the purplish margin around each of these, but one thing to take note of are the oblong shapes associated with them.  Thinking either some sort of slime mold or an insect.

Time to refer to the Raspberry and Blackberry Disease Compendium and leaf through the color plates in the middle of the book.  And viola we have the answer as being rose scale, last photo at the bottom.  The oblong shapes are the insect itself, this mobile unprotected stage known as "crawlers", the round mass the cover that the insect produces itself.

Management is to remove the infested canes, it does seem like a lot of crawlers are around outside right now, but that's not going to be all of them so a spray wouldn't likely result in complete control.  

For those wondering, no, I have not seen this in commercial fields.