I’ve been in Florida for almost 7 years, and I’m still seeing flora and fauna that didn’t exist in Canada. One has me intrigued.
Around the area where I work, there are bees that will take over a whole plot of land. They dig holes into the earth, excavating the dirt into a little pile, with a hole in the middle. Just across the street, in a residential development, there is at least an acre of land covered in these nests. At any time of day, there are thousands of bees hovering around over them, going in and coming out again.
I’ve never seen anything like it, and never heard of such a thing where I come from. Does anybody know what type of bee this is, and why they don’t make their nests in trees or somewhere off the ground? It would seem like they’d have a higher rate of survival by nesting where they couldn’t be trod on, or mowed over, or flooded by the Florida rain.
There have been no reports of anyone attacked by a swarm of them, so they must be fairly benign.
Like awldune said, they could be ground hornets. Interestingly, they make an AWESOME, but strong, kind of honey, which can be harvested, if your careful. (Just ask an armadillo…)
It’s very likely they are in Florida, since we also have them in Texas.
While it’s true that you may be seeing yellowjackets and not actual bees, there are true bees, such as digger or miner bees, that live in burrows. They are solitary, as opposed to hive bees, although it is not unusual for large numbers of burrows to coexist close together. Bumblebees also make burrows.
Yellowjackets… they’re in Northern Wisconsin too. Just ask my brother about the time he found out he was standing very close to the nest entrance. They started flying up his pants leg.
Tuckerfan- As a native Floridian I can tell you they are Yellowjackets. And mean as they come. You don’t even have to disturb the hest. Vibrations from walking in the area with maybe 30 feet will bring them looking for you. Verrrry aggressive. I have seen operators of front-end loaders abandon their eqipment and run when clearing a lot.
I have had to kill off a nest and I can tell you it is like a little city down there, going down several feet and several in diameter, with honeycomg-like structures of immense sizes. We have poured gas on them, set fires that burned for hours, even days, and still seen individuals coming and going from the burning nest.
Truely bad-ass bugs.
Definitely Yellowjackets. As Nicodemus2004 said, these are nasty little bastards. In my native Georgia, I’ve run across a nest with a lawn mower a couple of times. The only thing to do is abandon the mower and bolt.
