Can not see apples developing no hope

[southlondongardener]

I have a 4 year old family tree (a mix of Jupiter/Jester/Fiesta).
On one of the parts (not sure which) I can not see any apples developing. Is it possible they are but are too small to see yet?
On one of the others there are loads and on one the 3rd there are a few.

[FB.]

This year seems to have been very poor for pollination - I have complained on a few threads.
Only my self-fertile apples have set a worthwhile crop.
Fiesta is partly self-fertile and I suspect that is the one you have with fruits, since it's own pollen may have allowed adequate pollination to occur.
Jester is self-sterile, so poor pollination may reduce or prevent a crop.
Jupiter is triploid, so will be badly affected by poor pollination.

An additional complication in a poor-pollination year is that Fiesta and Jupiter both have Cox as a parent. At best, Fiesta will probably only be a partial pollinator for Jupiter, due to inbreeding of the Cox's family line and pollen incompatibility. Jester's parent
(Golden Delicious) also shares an incompatibility gene with Fiesta, so that could be causing partial incompatibility with Fiesta-Jester, too.
However, Jester's other parent (Worcester Pearmain) is an excellent pollinator, due to having a very different family line.

Next year, you could try hand-pollinating.
As the plants grow bigger, their increased size may make them more attractive to bees, so natural pollination might improve.
Very young trees sometimes don't set a good crop, but if you've had it a couple of years or more then it should be OK (and parts of it are fruiting).

Depending on rootstock and growth form, you could considser some pruning of the new shoots in mid-July, to increase fruit bud formation for next season, to see if increased blossom quantities will improve the cropping.

[starloc]

It did look like there was a lack of bees polinating the tres here, Early on there were bees outside on my plum trees , then there were very few when the apples and pears flowered, so to make sure the trees formed fruit i sprayed the flowers with gibberelic acid ( GA3 ) this causes fruit set, not exactly pollination but it is used by orchards worldwide as soon as you spray the flowers within a day or two the blossom falls off and fruit starts to form

[FB.]

starloc

It's your choice, but I don't like the idea of spraying any chemicals, regardless of what the chemical is for - even if the chemical is harmless.
It rather goes against the whole "grow your own" principle - in my eyes.

I have noticed - over a number of years - that apples have less pips than they used to. Many have none and should therefore have never developed into a fruit. I suspect that it's due to growers using chemicals to set fruit. I think that something similar is used to produce "seedless" grapes.
I'm sure that I read somewhere that most apples with less than five pips (out of a maximum ten pips) would normally fall off the tree in June, under natural conditions.

Since properly cross-pollinated apples (as opposed to self-pollinated) tend to be better fruits (size, shape, colour, flavour etc), I can't help but wonder whether the "fake pollinated" apples are inferior.

[shirlthegirl43]

Having read this thread, I decided I better check how our apple trees are doing. The old trees in the garden are loaded - not sure if I have ever seen such a big crop! My James Greive which usually manages a whole 2 or 3 potential fruits is also sporting a huge crop. All this in spite of hardly any bees being visibly active when the blossom was out (due to cruddy weather).

[southlondongardener]

This year seems to have been very poor for pollination - I have complained on a few threads.
Only my self-fertile apples have set a worthwhile crop.
Fiesta is partly self-fertile and I suspect that is the one you have with fruits, since it's own pollen may have allowed adequate pollination to occur.
Jester is self-sterile, so poor pollination may reduce or prevent a crop.
Jupiter is triploid, so will be badly affected by poor pollination.

An additional complication in a poor-pollination year is that Fiesta and Jupiter both have Cox as a parent. At best, Fiesta will probably only be a partial pollinator for Jupiter, due to inbreeding of the Cox's family line and pollen incompatibility. Jester's parent
(Golden Delicious) also shares an incompatibility gene with Fiesta, so that could be causing partial incompatibility with Fiesta-Jester, too.
However, Jester's other parent (Worcester Pearmain) is an excellent pollinator, due to having a very different family line.

Next year, you could try hand-pollinating.
As the plants grow bigger, their increased size may make them more attractive to bees, so natural pollination might improve.
Very young trees sometimes don't set a good crop, but if you've had it a couple of years or more then it should be OK (and parts of it are fruiting).

Depending on rootstock and growth form, you could considser some pruning of the new shoots in mid-July, to increase fruit bud formation for next season, to see if increased blossom quantities will improve the cropping.

I should have said that I also have James Grieve, D'Arcy Spice, Rev W Wilks,Pixy and Ashmeard's Kernel and they all have enough apples. (They are in different parts of the garden but the D'Arcy spice is very near the family tree and the garden is not that big).

[FB.]

Contrary to popular belief, I find my D'Arcy Spice and Ashmead's Kernel to be regular, adequate croppers. Both have an acceptable fruit set this year - probably the mild climate in Cambs suits them. Their crops are such that I wonder if they're actually partially-self-fertile, or even fully self-fertile. Their fruit-set as a proportion of pollinated flowers appears to be on a par with my Winston, which is renowned for it's good fruit set - due to self-fertility.

My Rev.Wilks will have an adequate crop.

My James Grieve is so heavily loaded with fruitlets (about 3/4 inch already) that I have had to support the branches.

But most of the remainder of my apples - especially the self-sterile and early-mid-flowering one's - have very poor fruit set.

I have heard that certain weather conditions at flowering time can affect how receptive a flower is, to pollination. Too hot/cold/dry/wet/humid apparently can cause problems.

[BFG]

I've got a great crop on most of my mine. I only put them in the autumn, so I'm pleasantly surprised. There was a few bees about when they were blossoming, but not a lot.