North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

Sorry, I'm no entomologist, but the flies don't look like any (sephid?) I find pollinating my flowers.  Are there beneficial moths?  I never trap any bumblebees, it's all yellow jackets and baldfaced "hornets".  I have to trap out wasps in my trees most years as their numbers begin to exceed food supply in Sept. and they start feeding on my later European plums and apples.  At this time the only bird problems I have are the pretty little sapsuckers that really work the plums and latest peaches.

 

As far as being swarmed at the trees, this happens at a clients site and is not a common situation anywhere else I manage.  No one in that family will go out and pick the fruit for fear of being stung when populations surge to that level.

 

Rivka, I didn't mean Snowhite, it is another Disney heroine, the one whose carriage turns to a pumpkin at midnight.  My brain is really deteriorating fast but there is a scene early in the movie where she's putting out the wash on a line and all the wildlife is singing and dancing around her and helping her hang the clothes.  That image is how I see you (not the rest of the story-line) so please don't burst my bubble if it's not absolutely necessary.