Source Giant nests perplex experts
By Garry Mitchell
The Associated Press
July 17, 2006
MOBILE -- To the bafflement of insect experts, gigantic yellow jacket nests have started turning up in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama.
Specialists say it could be the result of a mild winter and drought conditions, or multiple queens forcing worker yellow jackets to enlarge their quarters so the queens will be in separate areas. But experts haven't determined exactly what's behind the surprisingly large nests.
Auburn University entomologists, who say they've never seen the nests so large, have been fielding calls about the huge nests from property owners from Dothan up to Sylacauga and over into west-central Alabama's Black Belt.
At one site in Barbour County, the nest was as large as a Volkswagen Beetle, said Andy McLean, an Orkin pesticide service manager in Dothan who helped remove it from an abandoned barn about a month ago.
"It was one of the largest ones we've seen," McLean said.
Attached to two walls and under the slab, the nest had to be removed in sections, McLean said.
Entomologist Dr. Charles Ray at the Alabama Cooperative Extension System in Auburn said he's aware of about 16 of what he described as "super-sized" nests in south Alabama.
Ray said he's seen 10 of them and cautioned people about going near them because of the yellow jacket's painful sting.
The largest nest Ray has inspected this year filled the interior of a weathered 1955 Chevrolet parked in a rural Elmore County barn. That nest was about the size of a tire in the rear floor seven weeks ago, but quickly spread to fill the entire vehicle, the property owner, Harry Coker, said. Four satellite nests around it have gotten into the eaves of the barn, about 300 yards from his home.
"I'm kind of afraid for the grandkids. I had to sneak down there at dark and get my tractor out of the barn," Coker said. "It's been a disruption."
Coker said he may wait until a winter freeze to try to remove the nest.
In previous years, a yellow jacket nest was no larger than a basketball, Ray said. It would contain about 3,000 workers and one queen. These gigantic nests may have as many as 100,000 workers and multiple 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," Ray said in a telephone interview.
He investigated a nest near Pineapple, measuring about 5 feet by 4 feet, that was coming out of the ground on a roadside. A southwest Pike County house in Goshen had a giant nest spreading into its roof.
Goshen Mayor G. Malon Johnson said he consulted Ray in removing it because he was concerned that children playing nearby could be attacked.
A colony has a maximum size in early July and August. The hot, dry conditions could force the yellow jackets out of ground nests.
"Normally it starts declining in the fall," Ray said.
He said the "super colonies" appear to have many queens.
"We're not really sure how this multiple queen thing works," Ray said. "It could be that the daughters of the original queen don't leave the nest or that the queens have developed some way to cooperate."
Ray examined a collected nest from Macon County to count the queens in it.
"We found 12 queens so far, so that's definitely a factor," Ray said Thursday.
Dr. Michael D. Goodisman, a biologist at Georgia Tech who has studied large nests in Australia, said he's heard of some large ones in Georgia and Florida, but not as big as those in Alabama.A 6-foot by 3-foot nest on a pond stump in Bulloch County, Ga., was featured July 12 on CNN.
"I'm not sure people know what triggers it," he said.
U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist James H. Cane said he's familiar with a nest in Florida 10 or 15 years ago that engulfed a big easy chair. Cane said the monster nests reported in Alabama are intriguing and agreed with Ray that they could be the product of multiple queens in a single nest.
The nest usually dies out each year. "All that overwinters is the future queen," he said.
Given a queen's egg-laying rate, he said, there's no way a nest with a single queen could get that big in a growing season.
But in a multiple-queen colony, Cane said, there must be space where queens can't get at each other.
That nest was about the size of a tire in the rear floor seven weeks ago, but quickly spread to fill the entire vehicle, the property owner, Harry Coker, said.
Ah, it's only the size of a tire. That's fine. I'll check back in 7 weeks and see if it's gone.
I'll take snow over car sized Yellow Jacket nests any day.
Seriously, I don't mind yellow jackets. They keep other things away and never come in the house, nor bother me at all. I coulda knocked down their nest a long time ago, but there is no point.
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afghanistan: such a shitty place, even Bono doesn't care about it.
Oh great. I'm a yellow jacket magnet. I'll probably wake up one morning, and my entire house will be a yellow jacket nest.
I do remember yellow jackets buzzing around during warm spells last Winter. Actually, we've had a series of mild Winters down here, so I wonder if that has contributed to these monster nests becoming even more monstrous than ever.
Me too, I hate the little bastards. When I was a kid I'd find their nests all the time when I was mowing the grass. First indication that I'd passed over a nest was when I felt the sting, I'd look down and see 3 or 4 of the suckers on my leg zapping the shit out of me. Funny thing was they'd never bite my dad, after I'd find a nest he'd go out and either dig it up or pour a little gas down the hole and light it. There would be hundreds swarming all over him but he'd never get stung. It ain't fair.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
One of those little mfers bit me on the ankle at my son's baseball practice. I immediately went to CVS and bought every can of wasp and bee killer they had on the shelf. I went back to practice and committed mass murder. The other parents thought I was a bit nuts, going around and spraying every damn yellow jacket I saw, but I must have killed over 50 and taken out three nests under the bleachers.
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One of those little mfers bit me on the ankle at my son's baseball practice. I immediately went to CVS and bought every can of wasp and bee killer they had on the shelf. I went back to practice and committed mass murder. The other parents thought I was a bit nuts, going around and spraying every damn yellow jacket I saw, but I must have killed over 50 and taken out three nests under the bleachers.
POSTED: 4:16 pm EDT July 12, 2006
UPDATED: 7:45 am EDT July 13, 2006
A massive 6-foot-tall nest swarming with hundreds of thousands of yellow jackets was found in the middle of a Georgia pond, according to a Local 6 News report.
The nest, located on a couple's property in Bullock County, appeared to be a large tree stump from a distance.
However, when the couple got a closer look, they discovered the giant nest.
Officials said yellow jackets are usually known for building nests on the ground and not on water, the report said.
The couple told a television station in Savannah that they don't plan to move the nest until the weather is cooler and the insects calm down.
First of all, my apologies for not seeing this thread - I had begun one today on the same topic. I'll post my comment here and hopefully the mods will delete it.
>>>>>>
We've noticed an increase of yellowjacket activity about our house. Now, we've also had a hobo spider and black widow infestation. It was all due to unusually warmer winters; nice, freezing cold winters kill these pests. But with warmer winters - they can feed and multiply over a longer period.
We found out about the spiders (and centipedes, earwigs and silverfishes)when we had bats in the belf...er, attic that had found their way into the house via our carport. We called the exterminators who are environmentally safe, mind you. After the initial consultation they came back out a week later to spray the house outside with some citrus based stuff and since they were also licensed contractors, they drilled wee holes outside of the house and pumped a citrus-based powder in (btw, we were home the entire time - that's how safe the stuff is). They also built a "bat door" where the bats could go out, but couldn't come back in. We've since added "bat houses" for 'em - we like bats and they're good to have around. Just not in the house
BTW, we get free sprayings for a year by this company - they've been out here three times since that initial spraying. The last time (two weeks ago) they were here, they noticed as well, this increased yellowjacket activity. They're always knocking down some new nest being built - and we are, too.
Dave, I'm a yellow jacket magnet too. I know how ya feel!
Last week my son was driving my convertible with me in the passenger seat, top down. A yellow jacket got inside and trapped by the windshield. It was getting frustrated and landed on the gear shift. My son tried to swish it away so he could shift, and it popped him on the arm. He was swatting at the yellow jacket and the car was veering into the left lane and I was grabbing at the steering wheel and pointing at the road. HA! It was hilarious and I'm just glad we didn't wreck!
yellow jacket, wasp populations have been changing with foreign insects displacing some of the natives. Don't know if it was still true, ground and in building wasps are generally more aggressive than the aerial building wasps. Also the larger the nest the larger territory they defend. I would be cautious approaching a really giant nest. There are some tricks to safely dispatching these critters. Rob
GIANT Yellow Jacket Nests
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