This is occurring on my tree, I did not think they could break the skin?

If they are yellowjackets, then they are not bees :) And sugar rich fruits and berries, flower nectar and tree sap are their primary diet. They can be a serious issue in orchards come picking time!

You could try hanging a trap at some safe distance to see if that would lure them away.

Just an additional point that wasps are not wholly a nuisance. They’re also beneficial in a garden in that they feed their young on large numbers of caterpillars etc.

Try to make sure you keep all the "drops" picked up off the ground. I lived with Cortland apple trees in my yard for years, and it is a late summer thing, no way around it. They aren't boring into your apples, they are eating any exposed parts . . . We used to say, "It's hard to reason with yellowjacket season." You could try trapping them but that's sort of like trying to hold back the sea . . .

I concur with the previous two comments. I have two apple trees, and wasps are often found on the wind falls. They feed on apples that already have broken skin, like bird pecks, rabbit/squirrel bites, or cracks. Deer used to clean up all those drops, but now I have to gather them & dump them further away... so they won't be attracted close to my back door.

As a gardener, I consider myself fortunate to have several species of wasps on my property - including yellow jackets. They are relentless caterpillar & aphid hunters, and along with other insect predators, they keep most harmful insects at tolerable levels (I have NO caterpillars!). At this time of year, though, the yellow jacket numbers have grown, and they can become very aggressive... as in hovering in your face. :-O

When that happens, I have a very long vacuum tube that I hook up to a shop vac, which I place just in front of the nest entrance. When I turn the vacuum on, the wasps can still exit by crawling on the wall... but they get sucked in when they hover before landing, so its a one-way trip. If I leave the vacuum on from afternoon until sunset, it will suck up over 1/2 of the workers - you would be amazed at their numbers! This (temporarily) starves the nest, and for awhile the new wasps will be smaller & less aggressive. I may need to repeat this process several times in late Summer... but it makes the wasps less dangerous, without killing the nest.

Thanks, not one apple has eve made it to the ground (young tree). It cold be holes started by birds but I really do not think so - and they have holes 1" deep in some - in only 24 hours. I had a bird peck at exactly one apple no bees, I hung aluminum foil to keep birds away and set up a bird bath nearby to drink out of. 10 days later 12 apples with bees eating in holes - seems very unlikely birds suddenly found them and literally at exactly the same time the bees did. And ye snot bees yellowjackets sorry!

Are you sure the yellowjackets aren’t drawn to holes made by apple maggots?

tj

Pretty sure, no apples have any signs of them in or out never had them before.

I had all kinds of surface breaks on my apples, so I can't advise about yellow jackets making holes on perfectly good apples. They seem to exploit weaknesses in the skin and then eat out from there. If an inordinate number of yellow jackets are hovering around your apples on the tree, and you are seeing lots of holes, then you need to find the source of the holes. The yellow jackets may be a symptom, not the cause. That would be my approach, try to figure out what is boring into your apples. It could be a multitude of things. I didn't use sprays on my Corlands, they had all kinds of worms boring into them. I only used them for applesauce, I cut around the worms and used the good flesh.

Please don't confuse wasps with Bees

A squirrel made off with at least a dozen apples from our tree! I hope he doesn’t get a stomach ache!

They have completely emptied the apple from inside the skin, leaving that intact. I started to pick an apple and realized it was empty, except for yellow jackets moving around inside.

Same thing here. Wasps in ALL the windfalls and ALL the apples on the tree. I too believe they are making holes in the fruit. Pears too! It's horrendous! I have dogs who love apples and pears, and pick up the windfalls. I don't know how they didn't get stung! When it's not wasps, the cavities of the chewed apples are full of Asian Lady beetles! I will have to do something next year as I didn't get any whole apples or pears off my trees and I got sick of having to cut out the wasp-eaten parts and risk getting a sting. I haven't minded sharing our property with wasps and hornets up to this point but enough is enough!

I do think the bees are eating through the skin. Birds peck at some too. I put a bird bath nearby, it did not seem to help at all.

I've noticed that bird & wasp damage doesn't really pick up until the first frost, or when apples begin dropping. This year I harvested all of my apples as soon as I noticed birds congregating in the tree, and only found a few that were damaged. I seldom have to worry about wind falls, since the deer & bunnies usually clean those up within a day. But when I had 2 trees & visiting grand kids, I had to remove any fallen fruit before they arrived, to prevent stings.