I am making a game with pygame, and i ran into a issue with a function to remove apples from trees. this function does not deal with creating apples, only removing them, but apples only appear if i have a print statement in the function to remove apples.

I tried replacing the print statement with other simple ststements, like creating a variable, but it only works with print.
here is the code:

    def damage(self):

        # damaging the tree
        self.health -= 1
        print('- hp')
        # remove an apple
        if len(self.apple_sprites.sprites()) > 0:
            print('apple')
            random_apple = choice(self.apple_sprites.sprites())
            random_apple.kill()

here is the function to create apples:

    def create_fruit(self):
        for pos in self.apple_pos:
            if randint(0, 10) < 2:
                x = pos[0] + self.rect.left
                y = pos[1] + self.rect.top
                Generic((x, y), self.apple_surf, [self.apple_sprites, self.groups()[0]], z=LAYERS['fruit'])