An apparatus for automatically bypassing tying posts in fruit-bearing hedges has a working head with a pair of vertical drive shafts, each having stacks of toothed cutting disks mounted thereon. Each of the vertical drive shafts having a an opening wheel thereof. The stacks are movable between a position in which the cutting disks mesh with each other and a position in which the stacks of the cutting disks are spaced away from each other. The opening wheels are connected by speed reducers to the shaft such that the open wheels rotate at a speed less than the cutting disks.