Yellow jackets are a particular species of (typically) ground-burrowing wasps. In the U.S., wasp generally means a slender-bodied critter with a very thin “waist” that distinctly separates the abdomen from the thorax. Generally, if the waist is thicker (and the critter is striped yellow and black), it is a wasp that is called a hornet, although there are no “true” hornets in the Americas except one imported species from Europe. Few people choose to get close enough to “hornets” to distinguish whether they are looking at a yellow jacket or some distant cousin, but yellow jackets are simply one of a variety of American “hornets.” They do have distinctive markings, but are generally distinguished by the fact that they build their nests either underground or inside rotting wood while the rest of the hornets build large paper nests suspended from trees or eaves.
If bumble bees are anything likie honey bees, the ones you see flying around are female, so are they Edwina, Theodora, and Winifred?
Brian
As often happens when I read the boards, this thread sent me into a two hour “google-expedition of enlightenment” concerning bumblebees and yellowjackets where I learned the following:
- How to move a bumblebee nest (answer: carefully)
- Much more than you’d ever want to know about bee mating.
- That at least one wackadoo out there thinks petting bumblebees early in the morning (when they are “less active”, he says) is a good idea.
- How to build your own yellowjacket trap with a can of tuna and a bucket
- That bees are our friends, unless they are yellowjackets, in which case hand me the raid.
- What do to if you are attacked by bees. (Professional answer: back slowly away, avoiding flailing gestures which may attract more bees. Human (real) answer: Run towards the house screaming like a flaming chinchila whilst flailing wildly)
- Detailed instructions for the care and feeding of wounded or stunned (by cold weather) bumblebees. (From the same guy who pets them, of course)(We should all pitch in and buy him a cat)
Thats all for now. Updates as events warrent. Nows here’s HalBriston with Sports…
:rolleyes:
I once watched one of these neatly clip the wings off of a large dead moth and then clamp all her legs around the wingless body and winch up into the air and slowly fly off…I reckon to feed the babies.
Bumblebees ROCK! Cecil once did an article on them.
Did you know one way of ensuring bumblebees in your garden is to provide them with good nesting opportunities, or even a pre-fab ground nest?
I haven’t made pre-fab nests for bumblebees yet, but I have made prefab nesting opportunities to attract and observe solitary bees. That is as simple as hangin up a few blocks of wood with pre-drilled holes in them, and some cut bamboo stalks strun together. All of them are now inhabited by solitary bees. A few have been closed with mud by masonbees. Next year, from every hole up to five young mason bees will come. When it rains, they come back to their hole and you can see their little faces. 
An anecdote of my own. Yesterday I sat munching away at my hamsandwich, when a yellowjacket squarely landed on the sandwich. I sat still, wondering what it would do. It started cutting out a tongue-shaped piece of ham, about 5 mm in diameter. It’s mandibels cut like scissors, at ham that must have been as thick as the mandibels themselves were long. (Think of cutting meat with a pair of scissors, meat as thick as your pair of scissors is long). Then it tore the piece of ham loose and flew away with it.
You cannot help but admire the critters. Sitting still and observing them (and gently blowing when they come too close -they hate drought, but it doesn’t get them agressive- is far less likely to get you stung then waving about in panic.
One of the things I read about yellowjackets is that they become much more aggresive later in the summer. This is apparently because the worker larva secrete a sweet substance that the worker yellowjackets can use as food. As fall arrives the nest stops producing workers and starts producing females for mating. This means no more sugary goodness for the workers, which have to be much more aggresive in getting food for the nest and themselves. Thats when you really start to see them taking bites out of your ham sandwich without your permission.
BTW, you are a braver man than I. When a bee gets anywhere near me, I start screaming like a little girl and run in circles.
We occasionally get a carpenter bee or two that likes to hang out around our back deck. I call them ‘guard bees’ because they are territorial and will chase off other insects. They can also hover for prolonged periods.
My husband about wet his pants laughing at our dog today, who is also territorial and was beside himself that he could not get this loud buzzing creature to move away from his deck - he’d bark and lunge at it, and it would simply fly about three feet up in the air, and then come back down and hover in a slightly different place. Husband finally resolved the turmoil by chasing the bee away.
Oh, you should see me when a *really * big spider comes into view. After a minute or so, I remember that I’m not supposed to be afraid of spiders anymore. But by then, I’m halfway the next block.
When I was a kid we had, for several years running, some sort of paper wasp nest in our back yard about 15’ off our back patio. We would watch the nest grow and they would buzz all over all day long. They were impressive looking and never gave us any hassle whatsoever. Indeed, the only time they got feisty was when the nest grew so large that the branch had to be supported. One time my brother put on a bee-keeper’s hat and duct-taped himself into all his ski clothes and uset a rope to tie the branch to a larger branch. That way one wouldn’t hit one’s head walking underneith it. Another time my dad tried to get clever and do it gently with some sort of rope-and-pole rigging. It slipped. I recall sitting in the family room and seeing my dad go sprinting by the sliding glass door with this big, black cloud of stinging, insect rage chasing behind him. A few moments later I hear a door open and slam on the other side of the house. He has some sort of deathwish. It’s amazing that he isn’t dead yet.
I like bees. When I was really little I was swatting at a bee, trying to get it away from me, and my brother told me that if I moved slow and didn’t make them angry, then bees wouldn’t have any reason to sting me. Maybe a year or so later we were camping—soft, urbanite camping with camper trailers, etc.—and all the kids were running through the woods. Next thing I know, I am swarmed with bees. I think that I was quite frightened; but I do know that I remembered that if I moved slowly, then they wouldn’t bother me. So I slowly walked back to the camp and, when the adults saw me, they came running over and tried to get the bees off. My mom said that they were stubborn and actually had to be scraped off, the adults using their bare hands like claws. The adults ended up with their hands & arms covered with bee stings; I only received one bee sting and that was when they were being violently scraped off me. No body really knows what happened or why the bees were so benign toward me. I’ve never been afraid of bees since then.
Man, I gotta get back to work.