North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 09:54 AM 9/16/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> Just out of curiosity...  I assume the hornets have a number of apple 
> choices in your orchard.  Do
> the hornets prefer the Arkansa Black or attack all apples equally?  If 
> there is a "preference" in
> apples, do we know what causes it?

Tom,
It's a young orchard, with the oldest trees being 7-8 yrs, with others 
running the gamut from 3-6, so fruit production has not yet been very heavy 
- and the last couple of years have been near total busts for apple 
production due to late frosts.  Asian pears, and a couple of older European 
types(Clapp's & Keiffer) have cropped heavily for several years now, and 
yes, the hornets do eat some of the pears - especially Keiffer, but rarely 
seem to bother the Asians - but the Asians & Clapp's do ripen earlier in 
the season.
ArkBlack and Old-Fashion Limbertwig are the only apple cultivars that set 
any fruit this year that hasn't already ripened, and I haven't even looked 
at the ABs this season, but in year past, the hornets have pretty 
effectivelly eviscerated all the AB fruits by the end of Sept.

Lucky