You are here: Home » Blog » Archives for yellowjackets

A morning snack of cedar planks

Yellowjacket pheromone lure vs cedar shed: the shed wins

I was out in the woodshed this morning splitting logs when I heard the faintest scritch, scritch sound coming from the walls. The woodshed has three sides, all made from cedar, and when I put my ear to the wall it sounded as if the noise was inside the boards. Curious, I set aside the splitting maul and went in search of the scritch, scritch.

What I found surprised me at first. The outside wall was inhabited by half a dozen yellowjackets that seemed to be licking the boards. They weren’t queens, but probably the first progeny of a new queen. At first I was confused until I remembered that yellowjackets chew wood into a pulpy material and use it to build their nest. The cedar—being unfinished—was a perfect material to chew into a paste. The sound was made by their mandibles ripping the wood fibers.

I decided to kill them—after all, either I kill them or they kill my bees. It took all of about 90 seconds to find my butterfly net but by then they were gone. Annoyed that I lost them, I went on a hunt. By circling the house a few times, I was able to net two queens under the eaves within about five minutes. At least I assume they were queens because it is early in the season and they were monster yellowjackets—about twice the size of the workers I had just seen.

This was a good catch as it may have saved me from having to deal with two voracious hives by fall. This is just a reminder to watch out for those ladies in yellow. What looks like just two or three annoying wasps today may be two or three thousand even more annoying wasps later in the year.

By the way, did I mention there is a fresh (as of yesterday) yellowjacket pheromone lure hanging three feet away from the shed? Believe me, they were totally unimpressed.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

It’s time to think about wasps

We beekeepers tend to think of yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets as fall predators. Since only the queens live through the winter, few of these wasps are seen in the early spring. Still, the process has begun. All by herself the queen begins to lay eggs and establish a brood nest. As the months pass by, the number of offspring multiplies quickly until the air is thick with dangly-legged carnivores. By fall they are attacking your weaker hives, eating adult bees, ravaging the brood, and consuming honey stores.

Wasps are aggressive and hard to control once they learn there’s a local restaurant with bee sushi on the menu. One of the best ways to reign in these creatures is to kill the queens in the spring as soon as you see them. There won’t be many—just one here, one there—but by killing the queens now you can avoid a lot of trouble later.

You can use pheromone traps if you like, but I find a butterfly net quick and easy. The queens are large, easy to see, and don’t fly all that fast. Just scoop them up and give them a squish. I know . . . it sounds cruel. But if you want to minimize cruel, get them before they dismember your bees.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

"Hey, mom, what's for dinner?" Flickr photo by Ineta McParland.

Yellowjacket redux

After Monday’s post on yellowjackets I learned a lot about wasps. A representative of the Rescue Corporation–the people who make those plastic yellowjacket traps that I love–sent a positive i.d. on my nest: Vespula vulgaris. These are known as common wasps or, in North America, yellowjackets.

Dave at Georgia Wildlife Services, Inc. wrote to say the nest and surrounding envelope is called a carton. The nest is made from chewed wood mixed with saliva. Although it looked like wood shavings to me, it disintegrated when I touched it. So now this all makes sense.

When I went back up the hill the next day to look at the nest again, it was gone. Some of the wood and saliva material was still stuck to the branch but the rest had disappeared. I’m assuming the brood is especially yummy to things like opossums, raccoons, birds, or many of the other critters that live here in the Northwest woods. It’s no surprise that we don’t often see things like a fallen nest–what is a catastrophe for one species is a windfall for another. Such is nature.

A special thanks to everyone who helped with words of wisdom and species identification. I learned a lot from you all.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite.com

Yellowjacket nest falls from the sky

Yesterday I was coming down the hill after checking my hives when I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. It was right in the middle of the trail and from a distance looked like a compact pile of wood shavings. Up close, however, I saw that is was a large wasp nest. It was attended by hundreds–maybe thousands–of wasps that looked like yellowjackets. As soon as I got too close I got stung in the back, just below the elastic on my bee jacket. Man, those guys hurt!

I went down to the house, changed into my complete bee suit, and grabbed my camera. What had landed in the trail was actually a small dead branch from a big-leaf maple. The branch was covered in moss where the nest had been attached. The nest had broken into pieces from the fall but you could still see layers of parallel comb filled with brood.

When I turned over the pancake of comb with my hive tool a zillion of those guys bombarded me. In all the years I have photographed honey bees I have never had them coat my hands, the camera, the strap–everything. It was creepy. When I looked through the view finder all I could see were giant black silhouettes moving across the lens. I managed to squeeze out a few photos–mostly out of focus–but at least you get the idea.

I’m still not sure what the outer layers of nest were made from but I will take a closer look when I gather the courage to go up there again. It was kind of scary. I actually don’t know if they are yellowjackets or some other type of wasp. They only thing I know for sure is they have been attacking my honey bee hives, they are yellow and black stripped, and they sting. And, yes, they live in trees.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

Circular layers of comb filled with brood

Outer layer of hive looks like it's made of curly wood shavings.

Yellowjacket traps

This is my favorite kind of yellowjacket trap. The plastic part can be saved and reused year-to-year, and the lure inside can be purchased anew at the beginning of wasp season. They are safe for the environment because the lure is not a poison or insecticide–it is just a compound that mimics a pheromone that yellowjackets are attracted to. Once inside the one-way trap, the yellowjackets cannot find their way back out. They eventually die of dehydration.

The lures last about ten weeks and attract twelve different species of yellowjacket (Vespula). The pheromone is quite genus-specific; in several years of using the traps I have never seen a bee end up in one.

I usually hang the traps in the trees away from the bee hives about mid-August or whenever I notice the yellowjacket population increasing. The ten-week lure takes me into mid- or late October and by that time the first freeze has occurred. A good freeze takes care of any remaining yellowjacket adults, so you are then free of them until the next fall.

Since I began using the traps I haven’t lost any hives to yellowjackets. The year before I bought the traps I lost three hives to yellowjackets, one here and two at an out-apiary . . . and it was a gruesome sight. Since then, I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of trapping the wretched little bee-eating monsters.

I have yet to find a good use for a live yellowjacket, so dead works for me.