I've been watching my asian pears and have suspected that the larvae are penetrating the "footies" that I put on back in May and I just examined one that has a tiny hole in the nylon perfectly lined-up with the frassed "sting". Previously, I'd seen accumulations of frass that was outside the nylon web, but didn't want to jump to any conclusions. Then I started to see holes in the footies when I removed the footies from windfalls. Now, as I said, I see that at least one hole lines up with the larvae entrance hole. None of this was evident earlier in the season. Are they chewing through the nylon web?
Comments?
Frank
I have observed exactly the same thing on several apples in my orchard. Two of them just last week that had fallen from the tree. It seems that something came out of each apple and chewed a perfect, tiny, round hole thru the nylon to escape. Presumably, Coddling Moth.
So it seems that either CM were present before I put the footies on, or the CM were able to get around them, into them, or thru them to lay eggs.
Still, I'm *guessing* about only 10% infection, although I'll need to check more carefully.
Another interesting bit about using the footies has to do with birds. I've had several apples rot after being pecked at by birds. Normally I expect these apples to heal up but it seems being enclosed in nylon encourages rot. However, in the apples that were pecked, the birds were unable to remove any apple bits to eat. So I would guess that they will learn to go elsewhere to eat, and in fact, the bird damage that I suffered was over a short period of time and then stopped.
Thanks for the reply.
When did you put the footies on? Mine were on sometime in May when, according to the codling moth calculator, there should not have been any moths flying (or rather less than 1%, anyway). The pears were about the size of pingpong balls and there were no signs of "stings".
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