British Columbia: Blueberry worms

Hi. I have 2 large blueberry bushes and this year when picking them noticed a lot of soft berries on the bush and lots dropped on the ground. Further inspection revealed tiny white worms with black heads in the berries.Hard to find them but they are inside the fruit .I also noticed some flies around on the ground like houseflies. Is this fly larvae? Is there an organic spray or trapping method I can use to prevent this from happening next year? Should I be picking all the fruit and destroying it? What's the best way to eradicate this pest . I Prefer natural/organic methods but if no alternative will resort to other sprays.
Also have 2 cherry trees/1 apple tree on property. These also have worms in them too, although different looking. What a bad year. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm in Delta, BC.

 

ruthh,

A quick search online gives me this reference to Blueberry Maggot: www.agf.gov.bc.ca/cropprot/bbmaggot.htm

I hope this is not it. The maggot occurs back east & is a registered pest. If the maggots & flies resemble these at all, the instruction is to contact the Min of Ag. Important to do so.

Perhaps someone else on the forum is better informaed than I. My young blueberries & my neighbours large old bushes have had few disease problems.

gb

 

Hi, thanks for replying to my question. Turns out not blueberry maggot, althought seems just as bad though. Spoke to some people in the berry industry and its a new pest this year called the Spotted Wing Drosophila (a kind of vinegar fruit fly) that lays eggs in healthy fruit and spoils it. I am told almost all of the blueberry crops in the Fraser Valley are affected this year, took everyone by surprise at the rate of insect spreading. The ministry of agriculture has issued a pest alert about it and apparantly this is horrible news for the blueberry industry. It affects just about all soft skinned fruits though, strawberries, raspberries, plums, blackberries, you name it, so is a pretty huge problem, California, florida etc also affected since 2009. Not good news for BC berry growers. Only very toxic pesticides can be used to try to control it. BC Government on an emergency basis actually issued temporary approval for some chemicals for growers to use for this year to spray their crops with. Anyway thought I would update post so anyone else who comes across soft decaying fruit on their berries can know what the problem is. Here is the link to the BC Ministry of Agriculture post http://www.al.gov.bc.ca/cropprot/swd.htm

 

Ouch. News to me. Hope it turns out not to be as bad as it sounds.

gb.

 

I found them in my raspberries this year and you can wash and wash and never get them out. I am hoping someone has an idea about how to stop them without using pesticides. I trapped a few to confirm that it was the spotted drosophila. The males have a black spot on their wings. I am going to cut off all of the fruit soon, ripe or unripe, and hope I can find a way to stop them from laying their eggs there next year. It was in Oregon in 2008 and gradually they have moved up here into BC. I don't think many people realize they are even in the blackberries people are picking.

 

This is the third year that we've had problems with Spotted Wing Drosophila here in Burnaby. They've almost completely destroyed the sweet cherry crop, are not as bad with the sour cherries, and, among the small fruits, have the greatest affect on the raspberries. The only way to get usable raspberries is to pick them daily, as soon as they are barely ripe to enough to eat. The blueberry and strawberry crops have been OK; you just have to pick the fruit as soon as it is ripe an not mind eating lots of tiny maggots that you know are there but are not noticeable if you use the fruit right away. The plums have been fine; the maggots seem to only get into them if the fruit splits. They also seem to be unable to penetrate grape skins and only affect grapes already damaged by yellow jackets. Overall, I'd say that this is the worst pest to have arrived in Burnaby during my 40 years of gardening here.