I bought a home a few years ago that the existing home owner had planted a small orchard (about 40 trees). Since buying my property I've grown to enjoy growing fruit. I grow much more then I can consume and give the extra to friends/family and also set up a road side fruit stand to make a few extra bucks to help offset the cost of the maintenance involved with growing. One of my situations I am in is I have bee keeping neighbors that have 3 hives that are very close to my orchard. These same neighbors have a couple dozen fruit trees that they only care for maybe 3 of them. The remainder go un-pruned and are full of insects every year. Since they have bee's they are against spraying anything at anytime other then a dormat oil spray in late winter/ early spring. The first year of buying my home, I didn't spray and was on board with just going let nature figure it out. Needless to say that didn't work and I burned several thousand pounds of fruit. the 2nd I sprayed but was still learning when and what to spray to control insect and disease.

This is my 3rd growing season that has started on my property and I have been reading and asking lots of questions to professionals about growing fruit. I feel like i've learned enough to be successful in having the best yields to date. This year all of my trees are at least at bloom stages and/or petal fall. I have a group of apples that petal fall has begun and the fruit is already set. The other day I walked the orchard looking for insect damage or things that need to be addressed and noticed these apples already show some insect damage on the young fruit (about pea sized). So I decided to spray that group. During my spray the bee keeping neighbor came over and wanted to lecture me on this isn't the right time to spray and that he has a young new hive that I shouldn't be spraying to avoid killing them off. Most of my OTHER trees are still in bloom and I am not spraying them. I've closely monitored what is going on in my orchard including bee activity. The group of apples that I sprayed, the bees have left, petal's are falling and fruit set has already started. Everybody I have talked to says I should be spraying those trees or risk losing this years fruit. Everybody that is, except for neighbors. I tried to tell my neighbor my point of view but they weren't having it. IMO, I've seen some of the fruit that has fallen on the ground of the neighbors and it's full of worms. They don't bother to pick up the fruit afterwards either. I'd have to spray a lot less if they would either spray or take down their fruit trees that go neglected.

What are your thoughts? I'm just going to continue spraying and if I make them mad, that's just the way it has to be.