Thanks everyone. I did a thorough Google search on FB, and all of the photos that I saw look very much like my trees, so I have pruned out everything. Hopefully, I've caught it very early, but I'll certainly check them every day. Ray

Mark, once a tree has fireblight, the bacteria is spread through the entire tree, even if the wood is healthy. At that point, all you can do is just cut out any branch that shows signs of infection. The aim at removing the branch isn't to rid the tree of fireblight, but to prevent the infection from spreading to other trees. I've read the literature on this and didn't believe it when I first read the fact that fireblight bacteria will travel all the way from the point of infection (flowers) down to the roots. However, over the last couple of years, I've had numerous fireblight infections that I got to observe. On an apple tree, fireblight entered through the blossoms and fast growing MM-111 rootstock sucker tips started to show infection. On a pear tree, a branch got infected, but the variety was fairly resistant. However, on the same tree that was grafted with other varieties, grafts of obviously highly susceptible varieties started to get infected starting from the graft point upwards. That was proof beyond any doubt to me that the fireblight bacteria had traveled all the way through the entire tree. Fireblight thrives on fast growing shoots, but can't really grow much in areas of the tree where the level of carbohydrates is high. So the best thing to do is to cut the infection out down to last year's wood. If the infection goes beyond that, then keep cutting to the next big branch. Oh, and cleaning nippers is a waste of time since the bacteria is throughout the tree.

Some trees are more resistance than others. I have had it in my orchard on a number of trees, yet other trees were not affected. At times I have had fire blight so bad I could see the bacterial ooze dripping off the blossoms. But, as mentioned no infection on other trees. If I felt like I needed to do something, my first action would be to do just what you suggested. I have thought about trying to remove the canker tissue, but never have tried it. Canker blight that overwinter can cause water sprouts to become systemically infected by the fire blight bacteria if its on a nearby overwintering canker. If I cann't remove the whole branch because the canker is on the trunk, I just leave it alone. However, I do spray the trees with Kocide (copper) along wih my dormant oil spray and maybe it helps, but I am not sure it does much for the fire blight. There is a lot of information on fire blight and all of it does not agree. Studies have been done where it has not helped even to cut out the first strikes, just leave it alone until you do your dormant pruning and then cut out the dead branches. I used to put a lot of time and energy into fire blight, but now I take a more casual approach to it. I have had a lot worst looking trees than yours and one time ordered a new tree to take the place of the fire blighted one, just to pick a couple box of apples off of it this summer. I sprayed painted all the strikes with red paint, then pruned out all the branches during my late winter purning. The tree looked like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, but is now doing well. Go ahead and try what you suggested. Unless you completely girdle the trunk, it should not harm the tree too much. Use it as a learning experience. See what works and what does not work. I have had some trees die from fire blight, replaced them and they again died. Now, I avoid that particular variety.

As the years go by and you have more time and varieties by which to study fireblight, I bet you become more confused by this truly zany pathogen. It may be well known what conditions make infections possible, but the why, which, and where it strikes is way beyond my comprehension. One site will have a lot of fireblight on several varieties one year and even though I make no great effort to remove cankers that have moved from shoots into wood there will be no FB the next year (customers don't always want to pay for suggested treatments) while a few miles away trees will be hammered that had no infection the previous. Same thing goes for varieties affected, where a Bosc pear at one site will be killed while a Seckel right next to it isn't touched and at another site it's the other way around (although in general Bosc seems much more susceptible). The site where I had the worst fireblight this year never had it before in the 15 years since I planted the orchard. A site 10 miles away had it terrible last year but not this one. This happens frequently and the pattern is no pattern. Now if I managed commercial orchards I'm sure the patterns would be more predictable where there are rows of same variety trees abutted against other varieties on a huge scale. So it's probably best to go by the observations and data derived from commercial production on this one.