After giving up on one open-eyed variety (Improved Brown Turkey) due to souring caused by the Driedfruit Beetle (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r261300111.html), I planted a variety of closed-eye figs as replacements. Unfortunately, what passes for "closed" in some parts of the country often looks like a wide open door with a big welcome mat to the beetles in my yard.

These rice-grain-sized beetles appear shortly after the start of our summer rainy season (which also happens to be prime fig season), and I haven't found an effective way to get rid of them. The name is misleading, as they seem to prefer fresh, ripe figs; as soon as a fig is nearly ripe, they squeeze in through the ostiole, or eye, bringing bacteria with them, which rapidly turns a delicious fig into a flaccid blob of stinking, vinegary ooze. If the fig has an interior void, the problem is worse. Here's a quote from the above link: Driedfruit beetles damage figs in three ways: their presence in the fruit causes downgrading or rejection of the fruit, they transmit spoilage organisms that cause fruit souring, and they increase the attractiveness of the fruit to other pests such asvinegar flies and navel orangeworm.

This is the first year several of my trees have become really productive, and up until a few days ago I thought my trees were going to be safe from beetle problems. Unfortunately, two of my favorite figs are proving to be vulnerable to beetle-souring, and some of the others are affected as well. Here's the list of varieties that are now turning sour, and start spewing beetles as soon as I touch the fruit:

Violette de Bordeaux
Georgia White Hybrid
LSU Gold
Ischia Green
Conadria (not as severe as GWH, but still pretty badly affected)


The ones that (so far) seem unaffected are:
Black Mission
Black Mission NL
Hardy Chicago
Marseilles Black VS
LSU Improved Celeste (although mine have started getting a hard, dry patch near the eye--maybe a different manifestation of beetle damage?)
Celeste (cutting from Cecil's neighbor's tree--still too young to be sure, but seems to have a tightly closed eye from the one or two figs that ripened this year)
Tena (I see beetles on them, but no souring yet)
Excel (I see beetles on them, but no souring yet)
Panachee (tree is still too young to be sure, but no beetle damage yet)
LSU Purple (still young enough that the fruit isn't very good; maybe the beetles simply don't like it yet, either)

Trees that are either still too small to fruit or haven't ripened yet this season are:
Smith
LSU Scott's Black
Black Madeira
Col de Dame
Petite Negri
Desert King (should be safe since it ripens a breba crop, long before the beetles emerge)
Paradiso
Joe's Jersey
JH Adriatic

Ken, so sorry you are having to deal with these critters. Have you gone to spraying your trees?

I've thought about it, but to get the beetles you'd just about have to spray inside the figs, since they fly from fig to fig. I think I'll just have to stick with trouble-free varieties, and the list keeps getting shorter!

The organza bags might help.  They've kept bugs off of mine.  Chewing gum over the ostiole?

Thanks for the suggestion. In the past, I've tried bags, as well as sleeves large enough to cover an entire branch; unfortunately, woodpeckers made short work of them, and then the beetles can go through the holes and are right back in business on whatever the birds missed.

I've also tried sticking pieces of masking tape over the ostiole, and even used a narrow art brush to dab white glue over the hole while the figs were still green and hard. I found that covering the eye tended to reduce the quality of the fig, and it was also too labor-intensive--even back when I was only trying to protect one tree.

Ken,

Last year the dried fruit beetles were all over my yard and they ruined a lot of figs and peaches and even got into some of the pomegranates that had been pecked by birds.  This year there have been very few of the dried fruit beetles around.  I'm not sure why the difference.

I've noticed that even on one tree there can be a lot of difference between how the eyes look on the figs.  One fig might have a tight eye that is completely closed.  The fig ripening up right next to it on the branch may have an eye that is wide open.  Weather also seems to affect the eye on the figs.  When we get rain and the humidity rises the figs swell up more and the eye is more likely to be large and open.

The organza bags help with the dried fruit beetles.  The bags are not 100% effective.  It really depends on how securely the drawstring is pulled around the base of the fig.  If the drawstring is pulled tight and the fit is very snug around the base of the fig then it is very difficult for the dried fruit beetles to enter.  If the drawstring is not completely snug and tight at the base of the fig then the dried fruit beetles will find their way in.  No matter how tight the drawstring is pulled the tiny ants can still get in.

Ken are you still having problems with those woodpeckers ripping holes in your organza bags now that you caged in your fig trees?  I've had problems with woodpeckers, starlings, and thrasher birds tearing holes in the organza bags.  But they general target larger figs on trees that don't have dense foliage.  For some reason they seem to avoid the figs on trees with denser foliage.  I also noticed that those birds were more of a problem early in the season when the figs were first starting to ripen.  As time went by they seemed to lose interest in having to wrestle with the bags.

Thanks for compiling the list of figs with closed eyes.  But sometimes closed eyed varieties will have figs with open eyes and sometimes open eyed varieties will have figs with closed eyed.  No fig tree will produce figs that are closed eyed 100% of the time.  And some of the best tasting figs have open eyes.  I try to use the organza bags so that I can harvest both types of figs.  It is not a perfect system, but for me it has worked pretty well so far.

thanks for the list. i'll stick to closed eyes as much as possible.

Susieqz--you're welcome!

Joe, I haven't had any bird problems at all in the cage since repairing it, so I haven't tried any bags inside it, either. Maybe I ought to try bags on the GWH (I'll need to order some), since the figs are usually spaced just far enough apart for easy placement, and the figs are big enough to be worth the hassle. On the VdB, though, the figs are packed so close together I don't think I could squeeze a bag in between the adjacent figs. Maybe I'll see if I can find some of the branch-sized sleeves my daughter sewed a few years ago, and see if any can be patched up to use on the VdB.

I've noticed the variations in ostiole size among figs on an individual tree as well, although I have yet to see a big opening on the Black Missions or Hardy Chicago/Marseilles Black.

I've also seen those big year-to-year swings in insect populations. Last year the big green fig beetles were buzzing around by the hundreds--my teen-aged son may have dented the population somewhat by battling them in the orchard with a racquetball raquet--but this year I doubt I've even seen ten. Ditto for the brown June bugs.

If you have single-trunked figs pruned up so the branches don't trail on the ground, you can completely eliminate ants on your figs with a band of Tanglefoot around the trunk. Some people apply it directly to the bark and have no trouble, but I always wrap first with masking tape (sticky side out), after having a young stone fruit tree die and snap off right at the band of Tanglefoot.

Ken,

Thanks for compiling the list for us.  Please let us know if you find anything to be effective against the dried fruit beetles in your yard.

Ken, I hadn't had any fig souring from beetles until today! I have organza bags over most but some that aren't nearly ripe are not covered. I went out today and this one fig was covered in small red bugs. I've never seen them before. I got the neem and sprayed. That didn't work, they came right back. I got the windex and bam they fell over dead. So try something with ammonia in it. Probably ruined that fig but I wasn't going to eat it after seeing those disgusting bugs on it. Makes my skin crawl.