Some time has passed since anyone has posted on this, but I used the Bayer Advanced product for fruit trees (apple in my case) - in about May of 2013 on 3 apple trees. Now that harvest time is here, my apples are bigger and less diseased then I've ever seen them. The trees are very old - over 50 years and not much has been done to them except the last few years - slight pruning and a little one-time application of this or a similar product - and sometimes a lime sprinkling. Anyway, I am now so concerned about having used this product that I'm looking for comments from anyone else who has. I called the company a couple of weeks ago and was told that the amount of Imidacloprid used in the product is so small that it will not affect the fruit in terms of it's 'edibleness'. OK - so I picked several bushels of apples and started making pies, etc. I did eat some - raw and cooked and this past week my tongue has been kind of numb. It is possible that I burned it or overbrushed it but am not sure. I'm wondering if anyone else has used this and had anything similar. I'm just trying to figure out if it could at all be related to the Imidacloprid in the apples. I really hope that is not the case. Others have eaten a few slices of pies and are not having any reactions so I'm probably just being paranoid. My trees are huge and I used less than what the recommended amount was - but reading all the different posts - I thought I'd resurface this and ask some follow-up questions. (Had tons of bees on them this year and used the product after flowers were all off). As I'm about to hit 'submit' - I'm realizing that my daughter's friend gets a numb tongue from apples - maybe its in a lot of the apples we eat and children would be more 'allergic' / sensitive to this .... ? food for thought.

I would expect that as long as you don't cut any branches back to where they connect to the next branch you won't have a problem. I wouldn't think you would be in any hurry to prune your tree at least for a few years and then only if you feel it really has to be re-shaped to hold it's shape and balance. Paul

Not to be a smart-alec, but the good thing about your trees is that they are all very different, so when any of them have mature fruit you will know which it is very easily. Now, if you had 3 varieties of mandarins that all fruit in the same season... that might be trouble. ;) I can't promise that this will help, but posting a few pictures by... 1- taking them 2- uploading them to photobucket or another picture site 3- posting them here using standard html code for embedding images OR by posting a link to the image might help us a little. If nothing else, we'd get to see your trees, and everyone here loves pictures. :) To be honest, some citrus trees are just hard if not impossible to tell apart by looking at leaves alone. You'll know eventually, though! *** P.S. I got two of mine all mixed up once. Took me quite a while to remember which was which. These days I can tell them apart at a glance, but that's because I know what each individual plant looks like, not each type!

Some mail-order nurseries have that reputation, most do not. But that wouldn't happen for very long in a wholesale to retail situation. A retail store's wholesale vendor has a on going relationship to the store. They will order week to week, and often a live rep is going to take the order. If a wholesale nursery were to pull that kind of stuff the stores will catch on pretty quick, and if it's not rectified that vendor will be dropped very quickly. Sales contracts are negotiated yearly, and there is always someone else available who won't lie. And anyway if my hunch about this wholesale vendor is correct, they are a very reputable company that would not pull that on purpose. What does happen very often is that the labor hired to put those tags on are not always as vigilant about details as they could be. Minimum wage tends to get you that amount of quality control. Plus, it's their managers responsibility to make sure the tags and the block of plants being tagged are correct. But stuff happens; Workers are sent to the wrong greenhouse, codes sometimes can get printed onto the wrong tag, things like that. In a busy, busy spring/summer shipping season these mistakes often don't come to light until quite a while afterward. Hard to track down what customer bought which trees at that point. It's actually amazing it doesn't happen more often that it does. Most plants are tagged correctly, but yeah, stuff happens. Usually not on purpose.