The photo of blueberries at left shows damage from the caterpillar of the cranberry fruitworm moth. The adult moth is shown in the first photo to the right. The moth is about a half-inch long and was the one we found most often in the 2006 New York State IPM funded monitoring project. Photo of cranberry moth: ©Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2005, reproduced with permission.

The photo at the far right is of the cherry fruitwom moth, which is about a quarter-inch long. Damage from this moth is more difficult to spot because you can’t see webbing and sawdusty frass between the berries like you see with cranberry fruitworm damage, but you can spot infected berries because they turn blue early.

Do you spray every year assuming you will have an insect problem if you don’t?

Monitoring may show you that you don’t have to spray.

Do you have high insect damage in some years and low in others?

Monitoring will show you if you need to spray.

Do you have insect damage every year?

Monitoring will show you the best time to spray.

A trap has a sticky surface that traps male moths who are attracted to a capsule containing a synthetic version of a female moth pheromone scent. The trap is hung in a blueberry bush that can be checked regularly.

1. Assemble the trap components, then drop the pheromone lure onto the middle of the sticky trap bottom. Try not to touch the lure with your fingers.
2. Put traps out at the beginning of bloom, and leave them there until you’re finished making your cranberry and cherry fruitworm management decisions (usually by mid June).
3. Hang traps 3-4 feet above the ground on a sturdy branch within the blueberry bush.
4. For each moth species, use 2 traps per 10 acres of blueberries, or one trap for smaller areas.
5. Place traps in the blueberry field in a place convenient to find and check. Marking the end of the row will save you time finding the trap later. Edges of the field tend to catch more moths than the centers. But with our typically small fields in New York, anywhere in the field is close enough to the edge to feel this ‘edge effect’ and placement within the field is not critical.
6. You will need separate traps and lures for each of the two moth species, located a little ways apart.

• It is best to check the traps at least twice weekly or every other day when you’re looking for the earliest emerging adults.
• When you know what you’re looking for, it takes about 10 minutes to walk out into your field and check the trap.
• Record trap catches so you can see when peak catch has happened (numbers start declining).
• If you never catch adults: Hurray! Be glad and don’t spray for them.
• if you catch adults, you then have to decide whether or not you will spray. The most reliable way to time sprays is to scout for eggs on the newly developing fruit. See Michigan State’s Fruitworm Fact Sheets for scouting details.

In a U-pick operation, the decision to spray or not depends on your ideology and personal thresholds, as well as an economic threshold.

Correlating damage levels with trap catches has not be done in New York, but the results of our New York State IPM sponsored trapping project in South Central New York in 2006 showed cranberry fruitworm trap catches ranging from 0 to 447 for season totals.

One farm with a 241 catch total and no control measures had about 20 pounds of fruit damaged per acre.

The farm with the highest trap count did spray twice for control and had 7.3 pounds of fruit damaged per acre.

These are results from only one year of trapping and pest pressure varies yearly, so we are cautious about drawing strong conclusions.

Refer to the Cornell Guidelines for registered insecticides.

Great Lakes IPM
10220 Church Road NE,
Vestaburg, Michigan 48891
Phone: 989-268-5693
Fax: 989-268-5311
email Website

For the South Central New York IPM project in 2006, we used the Wing traps with plastic tops and cardboard liners (the sticky bottom part). Tops are durable and can be saved year-to-year, whereas liners are disposable. Each complete trap costs about $3.50. Replacement bottoms are about $0.90 each.

Each moth has its own pheromone lure, costing $1.50-$2.00 each. Cranberry fruitworm lures last 4 weeks, Cherry fruitworm lures last 6 weeks. You should only need one per trap per season if you want to put traps out until the beginning of bloom.