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bug spray time-table for fruit trees #927240

Asked April 01, 2026, 9:50 AM EDT

My wife is telling me that I should spray our FRUIT TREES before the buds appear. I tell her that this will keep the bees from pollinating the buds/flowers. Who is correct? I use the Bonida Fruit/Garden liquid spray. According to my notes, I did our FIRST SPRAY on May 25th in 2025.....and on April 24th in 2024. I also made a note (for the first spray) to wait until the flowers fall (April 15th in 2024) and follow-up with sprays every 2 weeks. Can you provide us with a time-table to spray our fruit trees against bugs?

Anne Arundel County Maryland

Expert Response

Any pesticide spray applied while flowers are open and being visited by pollinators may risk harm to those pollinators, especially if the spray is an insecticide or fungicide. However, the spray schedule for fruit trees is likely to overlap bloom time out of necessity to maintain protection from infectious spores and other ailments, so it may be a trade-off of risk: reduced pollination versus some disease or pest problems "breaking through" the preventative spray program and affecting the tree or harvest quality for that year. Organic pesticides in general have a shorter residual (the length of time the residues remain active and potentially hazardous to vulnerable organisms) than synthetic pesticides, so that might help to limit pollinator exposure, but the trade-off with that is the reduced efficacy of organic sprays overall when controlling fruit tree issues.

When to spray depends on the type of fruit and which pests/diseases you are trying to control. Having the first spray for either issue being mid- to late spring is quite late compared to typical spray schedules, which usually need to begin well before bloom in order to suppress early-infecting fungi.

For fruit preventive care in Maryland, we refer gardeners to the Virginia Tech management guide for home fruit (see the linked page). It's a long document since it has so much to cover, but you can keyword search it for either the pest/disease or fruit type.

Miri
Thank you
The Question Asker Replied April 01, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT

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