I’m not exaggerating. I’ve never seen anything like what I’ve seen tonight. I was out picking peaches about 1 hour before dark and everything was fine and normal. 45 minutes later, when it was more dark than light outside, I walked back out to get one more peach to finish a gift basket and I am still in shock from what I saw. My 2 peach trees that have ripe peaches were absolutely covered with moths, when I say covered, I MEAN COVERED!!! No kidding, many peaches have moths so thick you can’t even see the peach!!! And they are flying around the trees like something out of a Hitchcock horror flick!!! Like something out of a horror movie. It was absolutely stunning.
I’ve tried to tell you that I have an insane amount of OFM pressure here, which is why I’ve stuggled with sprays. But now its only a couple days before harvest, so I don’t want to spray my fruit now. I also hate to pick it early but I guess that’s what I’ll do.
Anyone ever seen anything like this? Are these OFM’s? seems late for them but these things seem to match photos of OFM. I don’t know what’s going on here, but its very unpleasant! Here they are. Forget the June bug…I can deal with them. But every peach on the tree is covered with these moths. The ones that have bad spots are worse, but they all are covered in moths!!!
1 Like
Moths feeding on rotting fruit is a common occurrence, not often seen because it happens at night and at the peak of moth season.
The OFM is a tortrix moth (Tortricidae) that has a very distinctive “rolled carpet” posture, all I see in your photos are a variety of noctuid moths and one geometrid (larger brown in lower image). I don’t know if adult tortrix moths feed on fruit.
A tortrix moth would be somewhat smaller than the noctuids. You do have a remarkable collection of moths there.
Thanks Larry. Sounds like you know what you’re talking about so I’ll take your word for it. I guess it isn’t as dramatic as I thought, and I admit I was pretty freaked out when I saw it and posted about it- I’d never seen so many moths in one place. Even as I was trying to get a photo, there was a cloud of them flying all around and running into me and so on…quite unsettling. But if it isn’t as exceptional as I suspected, then I suppose that is good news. Still lots of things about it are amazing. Not just the numbers, but the fact that just 45 minutes earlier I didn’t see a single moth. Less than an hour later there were hundreds if not thousands of them. BTW, they weren’t only on rotting fruit, but certainly were a lot more concentrated on rotten fruit. I hope they aren’t damaging the good fruit, but I bet they are or there wouldn’t be so many on the good peaches (as well as the bad)
thanks again.
The colorful one is Fig eater beetle. Here they are just before they were gonna lay eggs in my compost pile. Their grubs are huge!
I think those are what we call June Bugs down here in the South! But I must admit your name is more accurate because they definitely eat my figs like crazy.
That egg sack is pretty disgusting!
I’d be more concerned about the beetle - here, the Japanese Beetles gnaw holes in the fruit and there grows brown rot
Yep. Them big ol’ green June bugs are really working over the Centennial crabs and Honeycrisps here. Grr.
That beetle is larger than a Japanese beetle and up until @bleedingdirt 's post, I thought they were June Bugs. But after seeing Vin’s photo and post, I think it might be a Fig eater beetle? Wiki says they are 2 different bugs but darned if I can tell the difference! But you are darn sure 100% right about the destructiveness of Japanese Beetles. They are smaller than the ones in the photo, but they do much more damage. ANd just as you suggested, a Japanese Beetle will bite a small hole into fruit, then his friends will join him, and before long they have expanded the hole and then completely ruined the fruit. The June Bug/Fig Eater seems to only feed on peaches that already have some kind of damage. The only good thing I can say about Japanese Beetles here is that they really don’t stay around all that long. about 6 weeks and most are gone. 2 months usually finishes them all off. I had to fight them all year long, it would be the one battle I would probably just give up on.
The last two years here, for some reason, their numbers have declined to manageable