Pests In Apple Trees

Codling Moth Control

One of the main pests on apple trees is Codling moth, or the caterpillars of the moth which tunnel into the fruits as they grow.

The damage caused by the burrowing is normally discovered in the summer or when the fruits are picked in autumn, but now is the time to prevent damage this summer.

The moth lays its egg on the fruitlets after blossom drop in late spring and early summer and the small caterpillars start burrowing into the fruits where they cause a great deal of damage.

To reduce the damage caused by the moths you can hang Codling moth traps into your apple trees now.

Inside the triangular trap is a sticky base to which you position a small phial containing the pheromone (hormones of the female moth) to attract the male moths.

When they enter the trap to investigate the scent, they stick to the base of the trap. The idea is if the male moths are trapped, the females can't be fertilised and so the breeding cycle is broken.

Codling moth traps only give partial control because many of the moths will already have mated before they enter the trap in search of more females.

For total control, when you start to catch the small brown moths in the trap it indicates that the moths are active and you can spray you fruit trees with an insecticide to kill the caterpillars as they hatch.

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• Practical Tips

[appleworm57]

pheromone monitoring traps of the type shown are rarely used for mating disruption - they are 'monitoring devices' to determine if pest populations are present which may need further control.

[lawnorderer]

I you have ten coddling moths in your garden the best way to increase your population of moths is to put a phermone trap on your tree. The odor travels to your local neighboors yards and allows for your population to increase. Phermone traps helped increase my moth population by twenty fold. Do the makers of these things know that people actually belive they control the moth? I was under the impression the females do not have wings. The males have the wing and the females live in the ground.

[ggmorvaj]

That may be true in your location, but the more I think about it, the more I believe that it wouldn't work for me.....I'm in the country & there's just too many wild apples & crabapples everywhere.

Codling moths can fly quite a distance, so with such a huge local population, getting effective control would be hard.

I think that's why my traps failed....I caught plenty of moths,but apparently not enough.

I don't know that a 2nd year would be better.....And the traps aren't cost effective.

[ggmorvaj]

That's not the case, in my experience.

There's only a short time that the bees are active in the orchard...bloomtime....because that's when they gather nectar & pollen).

Bees don't frequent the orchard any other season...Once the blossoms are gone,so are the vast majority of bees.

Codling moths don't even emerge till petal-fall & even then, they don't lay eggs till at least a few days later.

Even if you don't spray for a week after petal-fall, you'll still get effective control .

[ancientLavada]

Unfortunately the time to spray is also the time the bees (that are necessary to pollinate for fruit) are most active and the sprays are very toxic to bees!

[ancientLavada]

the coddling moth traps don't get your trees worm free the first year but the second year they are used the moth population has been reduced enough to show how effective the trap really are. And you wil need to use them every year. Happy gardening!

[ggmorvaj]

I tried these traps, some years back, but didn't use them again....they're pretty expensive & although they caught moths they didn't catch enough to keep most of my apples worm-free. Perhaps if I'd used more of them they would've been more effective, but the cost of the traps would have made my apples too expensive.

[Catboy1055]

You Fucking Assoff caterpillars deserve to live too oh my god i hope you're frogiven