my advise is to graft two of each that you want. I have a high success rate of my grafting,but still do doubles if they matter. This would require you start then in containers and transplant later. I think that would be better in the big picture. Off the top of my heard I would say these are good ones to grow. Honey Crisp, Jonathan, Fuji, Suncrisp, Gold Rush, Pristine. If you want some oldies, Grimes Golden, Macoun, Baldwin. My no list would be Gala, it does not compare to these others in taste quality. Definitely not Red Delicious.

Yes, it is still safe to eat the apples; the fruit may or may not actually develop blemishes but if so they can be safely cut out like any other blemish. Cedar Apple Rust will decrease the vigor of your trees and may eventually kill them, generally reducing and possibly disfiguring the crop along the way. As you are finding out though, different apple trees have different degrees of susceptibility. You may very well already have resistant trees, if they never develop the symptoms.

Melissa, all apple trees from nurseries today are grafted to a root stock. It is the root stock that determines the size of the tree. An espalier tree is just the way the tree is trained to grow and not a type of tree. In your 4' x 25' area, with the right root stock, you could get as many as 6 apple trees planted 4' apart. We have semi-dwarf trees planted 4' apart in our tree rows (we have 17,000 trees in our orchard). In our retail nursery, we stock all dwarf and semi-dwarf trees and tell our customers what root stock they are getting. Most nurseries do not do that so you have no idea what size tree you might end up with. The most common dwarf root stock is Bud 9 or B9 and semi-dwarf is M26 or M9. If you contact Whiffletree Farm & Nursery, they can help you with the right trees for your situation. I know they grow a super-dwarf tree on M27 root stock that gets no taller than 6'-7'. Whiffletree is north of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. Her is one of our tree rows planted to espalier on M26 root stock spaced 3' apart. We also have a 3,000 tree apple tree maze planted to espalier! Hope this helps!

in my family, we always used "black salve" and that seems to work really quickly. I disagree. You may get results because it burns the area you put it on but can leave a scar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_salve Please be nice to honeybees! You don't need to run from them or squash them they are your friends. These bees are the big fat ones. If one lands on you, shoo it away sideways don't try to squish it. If you try to squish it, it will sting you in defense and lose its stinger and dies later. They only get one sting. Wasps on the other hand are carnivores and will bite and sting you for their own pleasure. Avoid them, and squashing them is totally OK! I prefer to play tennis with them with the fly swatter then step on them. If they land on you you will most likely get stung. You know that term Bee-line yea they gave it that name as you guys have mentioned they dive bomb you in a straight line sometimes. If you want to really not sleep at night, you can worry about the Asian Giant Hornet. Pray that it never ends up gaining a foothold here and stays over in Asia. These things are a menace and kill 30-40 people a year over there.