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Yellow Jacket (Vespula Vulgaris)
The maintainers have had two major incidents involving Yellow Jacket wasps or as we commonly call them ... ground bees. In both cases, there were life-threatening allergic reactions. Something you may not know about bee/wasp stings is that they can cause dizziness and a sudden drop in blood pressure .... you can have this happen with or without additional symptoms. IF you are stung by a bee/wasp, stay alert for this reaction and if you feel "funny", sit down and let someone on your crew know what is going on. Fainting from a sitting position is a lot less hazardous than fainting while standing and running the risk of additional serious injury by falling into rocks or even off the trail.
We encounter 'ground bees' fairly often while digging new trail or while working on the trail - moving rocks, weed whipping, etc. As a lot of you know from experience, ground bees or Yellow Jackets (YJs) will aggressively defend their nests. They "boil out" of the ground and go after whoever or whatever caused their nest to be threatened or disturbed. Unlike honey bees that have a barbed stinger that is good for one sting only, YJs have a smooth stinger and they can and will sting multiple times. YJ's also put off an alarm pheromone when they sting which is a call for assistance so if you get stung, more YJs in the neighborhood are probably on the way!
One thing we have definitely noticed: YJs seem to be much more aggressive later in the summer and early fall. I'm sure many of you have been at a ball game or picnic with a sweet drink/beer or food (fruit, etc.) and had YJs come around. They are very persistent and continue to come back if you manage to chase them off - swatting at them is a big mistake and they are quick to sting, even though away from their nest. The reason for this behavior is that they are desperate for food. Adult YJs, early in the season, focus on protein - they catch insects and bring them back to the nest for their larvae to eat. The larvae then secrete a sweet substance that they feed to the worker YJs. Once the larvae grow up, they are no longer feeding the workers so the adult wasps are out and about up to a mile or more away from their nests and looking for anything sweet. They are cranky and aggressive and more apt to sting.
We had a Konnarock Crew and club volunteers doing sidehilling to put in new trail along a ridge up the back side of Humpback Mountain. Part of the process is to take a fire rake and rake all the 'duff' off the soon-to-be trail down to the mineral soil before actually beginning to dig. In one sidehill section, it seemed like we were hitting ground bee nests almost every time we tried to rake. It was either late July or August, hot and dry, and the bees were really NOT happy. The Forest Service had provided the Konnarock Crew with commercial bee bombs, but we ran through those and a special trip was made to a local store for bee bombs so we could continue to work. Of course, when 'bombing' a nest, some YJs weren't home at the time and when they returned and found their nest had been destroyed, they would hang around and cause additional problems. Eventually, we got through the ground bee area, but this entire ridge section has been known as "Yellow Jacket Ridge" ever since.
Here are some links with interesting Yellow Jacket information:
1. A video of YJs reacting after the nest has been disturbed - the "action" starts at about the 2 minute mark:
2. General information:
3. Very interesting info - hibernation & spring emergence, what do wasps eat, nest building and colony expansion, how wasp larvae turn into adult wasps, how many eggs will a queen wasp lay, When will a wasp nest die off:
4. Pictures of Yellow Jackets and some commentary on encounters:
5. Medical regarding stings:
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