http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/science/fig-wasps-crucial-tropical-pollinators-face-a-climate-threat.html?_r=0

now i'm wondering what would be the effect on the fig wasp in lower temp and humidity. i would think singapore is rather humid. 

This is why we have to spread it around the US.  It's up to us to keep it from going extinct.

I am wondering what the conditions were and, if that is true, how do they do so well for Harvey when he gets over 100F regularly?

Hopefully Jon and Francisco will chime in on this.

Thanks for finding that Pete!

The 1901 Yearbook of Agriculture that discusses the introduction of the wasp to California discusses how the wasps emerge from the profichi later in the morning at the beginning of the season in June and earlier as it warms up and only emerge during the morning for a few hours.  I was under the impression that they didn't last long anyways, with new wasps coming out the next morning.  I'm already quite a bit cooler than Fresno and where JR has found them in Campbell and Fremont is cooler yet.  By the way, Fremont is close to the Niles area mentioned in the book as being quite a bit later than Fresno.

I'm already doing my job since I'm in a cooler (than Fresno) California climate.  I now have 10 different caprifigs wither in the ground or rooting. :)

two caprifigs stuck in the pot along with older trees still looks good. the mamme crop doesn't. i'm hoping they will root that way and i'll dig it out in next few months to move to 3 gal. the cuttings from one that lost all the figs are in the baggie. but i had to move all my set up to upstairs where it's bit colder than right next vent in my study due to painting job going on at our house. they should be back to their usual place by tomorrow the latest. 

need to figure out how to get the fig wasps here alive and take over the caprifig trees.. that's next yr's problem x) 

I stuck 20 cuttings of my Oakleigh #1 caprifig in my small rooting pots the other day.  If they root fast enough and develop profichi, I will stick them near the mother tree so that they get populated with wasps and will then sell/trade them (not for big money unless someone has too much).  I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot.  I used my own cheap compost/perlite potting soil instead of ProMix to keep my cost down.  I'm worried that with your tree losing the mamme that it might be hard to introduce the wasp since mine might have already left the mamme before your profichi are ready.  Maybe you'll need to grow yours in a very warm area and I can grow one in a pot in the shade, or something like that.  We'll get it done but it may take a few years to figure it out.

Once we get our caprifigs productive you should be able to send us not quite ready profichi and we can keep them cool until our figs are ready.

The timing difference may be a month and I don't know that they can stay refrigerated that long.

When wasps were first successfully introduced to the U.S. they finally did it by bring an entire tree here.  It was a large tree, I believe. I think it can be done with tiny trees.  If climate is similar enough, it can be done with profichi and fast shipping (used slow boat in late 19th century).  One mystery I have not seen addressed (previously talked about with Francisco who confirms the mystery status) is where the wasps live (i.e., next generation) after exiting the profichi.  I don't see any mammoni for quite some time after the profichi have dropped.

harvey, i think you need to start tagging those wasps to follow their movements. :) 

I think I would like to watch him do it Pete, we could grab a couple of lawn chairs and enjoy a drink with Harvey chasing wasps for intertainment! LOL

it would be entertaining.. tho i'm as curious as harvey as to where those wasps go between profichi and mammoni. in order for the next generation to survive, the female wasp will have to find mammoni to lay eggs. but if the profichi all drops and there is no mammoni.. where do they go? i heard they do not live very long as in hours. it sounds like lot of them will die out if they don't find the place to deposit the eggs for next generation, but they are always there in the CA. i was thinking maybe smyrna or san pedro, but i don't think they will lay eggs there... 

Pete, between the 2 of us, we should be successfull in getting and keeping the wasp alive in North Carolina. 

dennis, there are few other things we need to think about.. over pollination most of all. with our weather occasionally turning humid along with fig wasps pollinating the figs.. lot of figs will blow up and sour.. but it's definitely worth trying out. maybe i'll have to thin the crop so not too many profichi will fully develop.

Do you really think it is a good idea to import insects when you don't truly know the impact it will have on other things? Can I offer you a fire ant mound? Or a little kudzu?

fig wasps are co-dependent on caprifigs. no caprifigs, they will all die out. 

Gloria, fig wasps would be more likely to become a pest problem in California than in NC if it were a possibility, but it just does not happen.  They have very short lives and only move from figs to figs.  They're not as fussy as Martin and find light figs to be just fine.  That said, I would not really suggest mentioning it.  Some buthead ag official back east made up some ridiculous excuses and gave me he run-around when I asked last year.  Rather than use logic and science they used blah, blah, blah to wear me out.  An inspector that works below her seems to hold a similar opinion of her.  I am shipping trees and fruit, not insects.  They might be hiding and come along for a ride, but I don't see them so I'm not shipping them.  Got it?

No wasp tagging by me.  They are pretty hard to spot for very long when flying around.  I wonder if, perhaps, there are some wasps that just hatch very late and continue to emerge from the profichi even after they have dropped.  I do seem to recall seeing some wasps flying around even after the profichi have dropped or shriveled up.  No reason for me to worry about it other than wondering how to relocate populations.  I still think the best option is shipping plants with mamme or profichi on them which may have eggs in them.

I was telling JR the other day that in an urban setting I would either keep my caprifig small and either find a friend at least a couple hundred yards away where I could grow my caprifig or maybe build a small screenhouse in my own back yard and grow it in there.  You don't really need many profichi.  I picked about a dozen profichi twice last year to caprify about 12-15 fig trees and they did  a good job.  If I had more fig trees fruiting in the vicinity they could have handled them as well, I believe.  Growing it in a single trunk or just a very narrow tree should be sufficient.  Might need two trunks and cut one back each year (alternating) to keep size down.

The concern is not so much what the wasp itself might do, but rather the affect of having lots of figs with viable seeds growing in your area might do. In my part of SoCal, there are many introduced species of trees that are taking over natural riparian waterways - and in some areas, I believe figs are doing the same thing.

It's probably not the wasp per se that would be a problem - it's all the fig 'weed' seedlings they eventually might produce...  Now some here automatically will say - 'that's grand - the more figs the better'. But if it's at the expense of the native vegetation, that would be a shame.

hmm.. didn't think about the birds eating the fertilized seeds and pooping in the woods. that is one thing that can introduce invasive species.. of plants.

Gina, that is not really a problem here.  We have some wild figs, but nothing close to a problem.  Again, that will be much less of a "problem" in NC where the only caprifigs will be ones that are over-wintered in a garage or greenhouse.  If a bird eats a fruit with seeds in NC and "plants" it along some creek and it plants 4 of them, 2 are likely to be caprifigs but there will be no wasps in them and there never will be because they will die during the winter.

http://www.cal-ipc.org/ip/management/ipcw/pages/detailreport.cfm@usernumber=50&surveynumber=182.php

For you, definitely a problem.  For those of us with winter temps below zero, not much of a problem.  I do know an area in CA where the riverside has several sapling figs.  The brambles growing with them are pretty robust as well.

what i'm curious about is what the difference is one that's been pollinated and one that hasn't. i know what that hasn't taste like. some are very very good. but i saw harvey and francisco's pix. if the taste can be improved... how much and if it's worth getting them pollinated. 

Hi bullet08,
I would say that it influences mainly the final size of the fig.

My reason for that is a bad experience I had in 2013 - nothing scientific - just putting observations together.
My Dalmatie had brebas that so to say stayed "flat" - they were at the third of the size that I was expecting them to reach.
When they got ripe I opened them, and the inside was blueish and almost no seeds - just no to say no seeds at all.
Dalmatie being a common fig strain, she is parthenocarpique - so the figs self pollinate themselves and make seeds - viable or not is another question, although partly of the response is in my topic about "Pollination myth kill".
So what I understood is that the cold spring blocked the parthenocarpique process, and the figs got almost no seeds, and thus were smaller than expected .

So I would expect a common fig pollinated to ripe bigger figs .

jdsfrance, most of my figs are typical size.. depends on the varieties. they are not super small, and they all have good amount of seeds. but looking at francisco and harvey's figs that has gone through caprification, they are all more bright and dark inside, very juicy, and looks more appetizing. i've never been to area where fig wasps are native or even active like CA to see what that differences are in person. 

i have been reading few articles and old papers on caprification and what researches were going in back in the days. it seems the goal of few researches are to create common figs that will not need caprification, but will have same properties as smyrna when they are pollinated. 

the problem with commercial industry is that fig wasps can carry molds and fungi in some cases and cause low number of total crop they can market. also, over pollination is possibility where the figs will split open. so the idea behind lot of hybridization is to come up with figs that will not need fig wasps so they can harvest "perfect" figs to take to the market. 

but since i'm a home gardener and doesn't really care about selling my figs, i just want to see what pollination will do to the figs in our climate.