North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>]

OK, this was going to be my important question but I have it figured 
out. I had in the back of my mind that maybe the pest in question 1 was 
the same as this question 2. I couldn't see how, since there were 2 
distinct types of damage.
My biggest apples are just bigger that the size of a nickle with some 
varieties still much smaller. I couldn't understand how I could have 
apparent coddling moth damage on so many tiny apples when I virtually 
never find them in mature apples. I also wondered why the entry hole 
wasn't at the calyx end.
Well, I don't have coddling moths, I have European apple sawfly. The 
reason for two types of damage is that they start right at petal fall 
and make a path on the surface of very young apples:
http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/orchardmon/pest_descriptions/pest_images/ph1-35c.JPG 

Then they often travel to an adjacent apple before the first one drops 
and they make damage that looks about like this:
http://nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/treefruit/pests/eas/eas7.jpeg
That's not a really great picture but it's about the best I could find 
on the web. That one is linked from this article:
http://nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/treefruit/pests/eas/eas.asp#fig7

Today I was picking off infested apples and dropping them into buckets 
with some water in the bottom. I've been seeing this for many years but 
until now didn't figure out what it was. This year it's a big problem 
and it's too late to do anything about it, other than what I'm doing by 
picking the apples off. I only have 4 trees and none are really huge. 
There are a few upper branches I can't even reach with a ladder though. 
On major parts of some trees, there are far more infested apples than 
those that appear to be OK. They will be over thinned I'm afraid.

Lastly, it's going to be hard to spray at the perfect time next year. I 
have multiple varieties grafted on 3 of the 4 trees. I can't spray the 
early bloomers right at petal fall when the later blooming branches 
still have bees working the flowers. I'll keep drowning the infested 
apples as long as I still find larva inside and next year I'll do what I 
can with spray. That should knock them back down to low numbers.

Steve in the Adirondacks