Wasps Play No Favorites When Angry

Get away! Shoo! Ouch!

It’s yellow jacket season again, and they’re everywhere. Coping with these little hummers in late summer and early fall can be a harrowing experience, or a swollen one, depending upon the type of your encounter. By August and September, the nest size is at its peak. It may contain more than 4,000 workers, all looking for protein and sweets. These uninvited guests rudely interrupt our yard work and our picnicking. They swarm around water faucets, fruit trees and flowers. I have seen them try to pack off pieces of meat twice their size. They dive into beverage cans for a quick sip, only to surprise the unwary drinker.

Yellow jackets are wasps. They are not friendly bees. There is one generation each year and only fertilized females, called queens, overwinter.

Once the queen has established her nest in the spring, she lays about 40 eggs. Since the young are immature larvae, the queen must feed them by foraging for nectar and insects. (If you are allergic to wasp stings, this is an excellent time to set out wasp traps. If the queen is lured into the trap, the nest cannot survive.) If the queen survives, 18 to 20 days later the larvae pupate into infertile female workers. These workers take over the foraging, while the queen stays in the nest, laying eggs. Her family grows quickly. In the fall, reproductive cells are built and from these, males and queens emerge to mate. Eventually, with freezing weather, the males and all the workers in the colony will die. The fertile queens will pass the winter by resting in cracks and crevices of old logs or stumps or under loose bark. The nest is abandoned and never used again.

Why are yellow jackets so aggressive right now? Since their population is at its peak, food is scarce. To make matters worse, the males will be kicking the workers out of the nest. Now we have hungry, aggressive, angry stingers on our hands.

Because the wasps are so aggressive now, there are a few safety precautions we should be following: Wear subdued colors (white or gray) rather than bright colors or vivid prints. Especially no bright flower prints.

Don’t use scented soaps, perfumes, cosmetics or after-shave lotions. Don’t wear shiny buckles or jewelry.

Watch the sandals and bare feet. Some of these workers are foraging on low-growing plants.

Keep ripe fruits and vegetables picked up. Keep garbage can lids on tightly.

I know there are times you may find this hard to believe, but yellow jackets are beneficial. They kill numerous insects that destroy our crops and ornamental plants. They eat countless aphid and house flies. Try not to eliminate their nests unless it is absolutely necessary. If nests must be eliminated, do it in the late evening after the wasps return home. The cooler the evening, the better.

Two types of yellow jackets build two types of nests - aerial and subterranean. The aerial nests are easily identified. They are cone shaped and look as if they were constructed of gray paper. Subterranean nests are the same shape, only hidden in the ground.

Aerosol products seem to be the safest means of destroying nests. If you choose to destroy a nest, wear protective clothing and be able to get into a safe place quickly. The wasps will be quite angry and may attack. The label details the methods of use.

Ground nests can be destroyed by dusting a piece of steel wool with Sevin dust insecticide and plugging the hole of the nest. Wasps chew on the dusted steel wool and perish. As with aerosol products, always have a quick place to retreat for protection.

There are excellent traps available that contain yellow jacket attractants. Wasps will swarm to this material, so hang the traps away from active areas. These traps can collect as many as 150 wasps a day. If you seem to have more than your share of these critters, hang three or four traps about the yard.

Suspending fish or meat over a pail of water also works as a trap. The wasps go for the protein. They eat too much, get too heavy and drop into the water and drown. Adding a little soap to the water makes it even harder for them to fly away.

Supposedly, if we don’t swat at or run from wasps, they won’t sting. Wasps break the rules this time of year. They will sting with little or no provocation.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Phyllis Stephens The Spokesman-Review