… in Alabama.
I mean, GIANT. One fills a’55 Chevy– see photo– and consists of possibly a hundred thousand individuals and several queens.
“Without a cold winter to kill them this year, the yellow jackets continued feeding in January and February — and layering their nests made of paper, not wax. They typically are built in shallow underground cavities.
“Yellow jackets, often confused with bees, may visit flowers for sugar, but unlike bees, yellow jackets are carnivorous, eating insects, carrion and picnic food, according to scientists.
“They were able to find food to colony through the winter,” [entomologist Charles] Ray said in a telephone interview”.
Vespid wasps are interesting but scare me– I have some sensitivity, and once nearly died of anaphylactic shock from an attack (several stings) by a relative. It is a VERY aggressive family. I hope the phenomenon does not spread, but I have a feeling it will….
YIKES! That is literarly the stuff of my nightmares.
That picture gives me the “willies” I was attacked by a colony of ground wasps as a child in NH, probably the least fun I’ve ever had. I’m still scared to death of those things…and they’ve ruined a perfectly good ’55 Chevy. I am depressed.
We had a nest in our back yard in Cincinnati that I had to burn out because it was too close to the house. They were really white-faced hornets rather than yellow-jackets, even nastier if anything. I remember being very impressed that it was basketball-sized.
Ground wasps= yellowjackets (just “wasps” in England, where I believe there are not as many species of paper wasps– England?). And bald- (or white) faced hornets are the largest and nastiest of the group. They are the ones that nearly killed me!
Ask Reid to tell the story of destroying a white-faced colony in our backyard in Cincinnati. I wish I had a picture of the personal protective equipment he donned before doing the deed!
A few years back, a friend of mine’s tiercel Peregrine died from a yellowjacket sting to the face.