Yellow Jackets

Fall is here and we have had a cooling rain and the temperatures have finally dropped at night. Autumn is a beautiful time here in East Tennessee. Our leaves have just started to turn and mums are available in the stores. The days are shorter. The morning and afternoon light is a soft yellow hue compared to summer’s white light. The difference is comparable to summer light being a fluorescent bulb and fall being the yellow light of our old outlawed incandescent filament bulbs.

Two weeks ago I had an exciting day mowing the banks in front of the house. I thought I had stepped onto a fire ant hill when the first yellow jacket stung my leg. Looking down the push mower was buzzing with yellow jackets as well as the ground where I was walking. I quickly sprinted toward the house leaving the lawn mower as heat bait for the wasp. I was stung again before I arrived at the door and I could hear some yellow jackets buzzing around my head.

Boy, did those stings hurt. I had total of four. I had become just another statistic, one of the 500,000 people who visit the emergency room each year after a sting. In America 12-15 people die from snake bites each year. Compare that to the fact that more than twice as many die from wasp and bee stings. We are either smarter or have nicer snakes in our area because in the past 40 years there has only been seven recorded deaths from snake bites in the whole state of Tennessee. Then the shocking statistic (no pun intended) that about 100 Americans die annually from being struck by lightning.

They may look like bees, but ground nesting yellow jackets are actually members of the hornet family. Their large numbers and unmatched aggression make them extremely dangerous, especially when you get near their nests. The colonies are currently at their max size and the hornets are more aggressive now as they near death. You can compare their attitude to a cranky old person who is never happy so they immediately attack everything you say.

If you stumble upon a nest — an unfortunately common occurrence while mowing or weed whacking — and get stung repeatedly, seek immediate medical attention, especially if you experience symptoms beyond the pain of the individual stings, like difficulty breathing. Virtually all of the so-called “bee sting deaths” in the United States are the result of yellow jacket attacks, so you should take such an attack seriously.

The house was cool when I rushed inside and shut the door to keep out the yellow jackets that were still swarming around me. I was able to kill the one that had entered with me. I made a paste of meat tenderizer to put on my stings then took off my boot only to find another angry hornet fly out of my boot and over to the window. Even with the painful stings, my adrenaline was pumping as I grabbed the fly swatter and killed the intruder. Phew!

LIFE CYCLE & HABITAT

Ground-nesting yellowjackets construct paper nests that may contain thousands of larvae and adult workers. These nests are typically located underground in abandoned rodent burrows or in other enclosed spaces such as tree cavities, wall cavities, wood piles, and dense ivy. During the fall, young queens mate and find protected areas (such as fallen logs, tree cavities, cracks in buildings, etc.) where they remain for the duration of the winter. When spring arrives, queens select nesting sites and begin the process of colony initiation (nest construction, deposition of eggs, and hunting for food). Once adult workers emerge, they take over many of the tasks of nest maintenance so that the queen can remain within the safety of the nest and lay eggs. Foraging ground-nesting yellowjacket workers commonly come into contact with people who are eating outdoors and may become extremely aggressive. The colony grows throughout the summer and into fall, and eventually begins production of males and queens. When rain and/or freezing temperatures return, nests typically die out, and newly mated queens find protected areas to overwinter so the process can begin anew in the spring.