Need help confirming Pear Scab

It looks like scab, or if it's not scab it looks like a probable fungal infection with similar symptoms.

The lack of fruit could just be poor pollination: some of my pears have no crop this year despite lots of flowers. Pears are generally quite light croppers anyway due to their early flowering (less pollinating insects) and less (unrelated) pear trees around to 'donate' pollen.

Just because leaves get scab doesn't always mean the fruit will get scab (and just because leaves don't get scab doesn't mean the fruit won't), although there is a correlation.

What's your location?

Thanks for your reply.
At least I was thinking on the right lines! I will have to up the treatment to every couple of weeks and hope it gets under control.

I am in South Wales near Ammanford.

Scab seems to like a damp and humid habitat and with the river being so close it makes sense.

Thanks again.

Agree with the lack of pollination partner for lack of fruit.
Do you know the PH of the soil?

Pollination should not be a problem (I think??!) as there are 6 other apple trees in the orchard all in the same pollination group as the pears.

Just checked the PH aroud the pear trees and it is between PH 5.5 and 6.2.
Is that OK?

Thanks.

Complete ignorance here but can apples be used to pollinate pears?

I thought they could but could be wrong??!!!

No. Apples will not pollinate Pears.

I don't want to sound like a 'gloom merchant', but I've found Comice a difficult variety of Pear to grow successfully. In fact I gave up years ago. Maybe it's my failing as a grower, but Comice seemed to be prone to just about everything that could go wrong and hardly ever yielded well for me. Instead, I've settled for boring old Conference, which is self fertile, so doesn't need another Pear variety to be planted nearby in order for it to be pollinated and set fruit. It generally yields pretty well where I live in West Wales.

As FB says, many Pear varieties flower several days earlier than the earliest flowering apples, and the flowers are very sensitive to frosts and severe wind. Where I live, if it's cold, most pollination of pears seems to be performed by Bumble bees rather than honey bees. And when it's very cold, even the bumble bees don't fly. Young, expanding, pale green leaves on Pear trees are also damaged and badly discoloured by strong winds.

I'd also think twice before embarking on a 'no win' program of intensive fungicide spraying against scab, certainly in wettish Welsh conditions. Growing (partially) scab resistant varieties could be a better bet.

Lastly, I lose patience with trees that refuse to yield, perhaps after five years. They are a waste of good space, unless you've got loads to spare. I either dig them up and replace them with more productive varieties for the prevailing conditions, or top graft another variety onto them. Trialing different varieties, until you come up with those that really suit your specific local growing conditions, can be an interesting and rewarding process, provided one lives long enough.

....and two trees of the same named variety won't cross-pollinate (e.g. two Comice trees or two Cox trees).

Very unlikely - not least because they don't usually flower at the same time - but occasionally funny things happen in nature and I suspect that if we conducted enough experiments we might find a few varieties which could be crossed with each other. But the simple answer is: 'no - pears, apples, plums etc don't cross pollinate'.

As mentioned in my earlier post: my pears have very little fruit (Concorde, Conference, Doyenne d'Ete, Jargonelle, Josephine de Mailines, Louise Bonne de Jersey, Williams) and they are intermingled with at least a couple of dozen assorted fruit trees, mostly apples.
There simply weren't enough bees around at pollination time, or the bees were more interested in other plants (pear flowers are not attractive to insects unless there is nothing else available).

Thanks guys for all your advice. The trees look quite healthy now and the scab has reduce by at least half. Going forward I think I will introduce another pollinating partner for them and see how that goes. If that fails I will look at replacing them with a more robust varity as suggested. Thanks again.