From April to now, the Pundits can pack a little picnic dinner, head to the park, and enjoy a lovely meal outside. Then suddenly, right about this time of year, for no apparent reason, the bees, specifically the honey bees, turn psycho. They crawl into my soda, they hover over us and pester us incessantly. They will only cease to annoy us if you kill them. If you choose to let them land, you can actually witness them EAT food.
What is up with them?
My geraniums and Rose of Sharon and petunias are still blooming and look lovely. They used to be content with what nature provided them. Why do the bees abandon their usual habits and turn into ravenous stinging brats at this time of year?
You sure those are honey bees? There are a number of wasps that resemble bees, but bees are very rarely aggressive, whereas wasps almost always are. These wasps are omnivores, too, so they’ll eat meat (these are the little S.O.B.s one finds hovering around trash cans at McDonald’s and Dairy Queen in the late summer and early fall.)
If they ARE honey bees, I haven’t a clue, but if they’re wasps, my advice to you is KILLTHEBASTARDSBEFORETHEYKILLYOU!!!
I always get stung this time of year. Wait, let me rephrase so you don’t think I ge tstung yearly… Everytime I’ve been stung it’s been around this time of year (up to mid-Sptember). The yellow hornet/wasp thingies though, not fuzzy honey bees.
And as I have no siblings it’s only been recenlty when a co-worker got stung that I found out that , no, it is NOT normal to be stung on your pinky and have your whole arm swell up. All this time I thought everyone reacted to bee stings they way I do.
:eek: I’m scared. Not going outside until they’re all dead!
Yellowjackets get aggressive this time of year because they are stocking up for the winter. Actually, they all die, but the queen goes into egg-laying overdrive, and the eggs survive. Laying eggs takes lots of energy, as does the nest building…
I don’t think that’s actually correct; the nest produces a number of new queens that fly off, mate and overwinter in various places (including wardrobes) - the feeding frenzy is probably to gather energy to build up the new queens’ energy reserves for their nuptial flight and to see them through the winter.
So they are wasps and not honey bees? While they are ornery, they have never stung me, knockonwood. I do admit being fascinated by the little buggers. I mean, how hungry they must be to enter the pop can that I am holding right in my hand. Not to mention brave, because I’m quite a bit bigger than they are and I have, count 'em, TWO hands with which to slap them into oblivion. But they ignore me completely and go on about the pop can skerplunking. (I imagine it would be cool and dark in there, like a little bee cave). I also am fascinated watching them land on my chicken and cut off an itty-bitty bite of chicken.
I didn’t know that wasps were omnivores, but even so I can’t see them transmogrifying deep fried chicken into honey…so I’m still at a loss why suddenly in the fall they turn psycho. Do they feed the queen bee the chicken?
Like the other posters, I am pretty sure those are Yellow jackets. What I have read is that their natural food sources start getting scarce at the end of summer and they turn to other sources - garbage cans, trash, soda cans…and they do become more agressive in obtaining food. Maybe he cooler weather has reduced the number of other insects they eat.
One year we had a nest above our garage behind a basketball hoop, and I watched some Yellow Jackets try and get back in the nest. This was after a frost, but not a hard frost. There was one larger Yellow Jacket set up as a watchman (it looked like to me) and he would attack any other smaller Yellow Jacket trying to get into the nest. He stung a few to death, and for a few days after I found more Yellow Jacket bodies on my driveway.
MAybe they know it is almost time to die and want to go out in a blaze of glory.
Always look for the venom sac after you’ve been stung. You’ll see it pulsing away, pumping out what so many people fear. The poor dears really do take one for the team, they sting you and then they die. The Amazons of the insect world? No venom sac=not a honeybee. Put the blame where it then belongs, i.e. on the yellow jackets and wasps.
