Monday, February 4, 2013
Yellow Jacket Hive
So, my mother hasn't been the only one busy at her place of residence. So were her uninvited guests. The Bees! While having dinner with my brother last week, she asked him to check out a crack in the sheet rock she had noticed in the ceiling of her laundry room. After poking around, the cracks turned out to be a few small holes where my brother peered in and saw a hornets nest. Today, Bill and Ford had to cut back the whole sheet rock wall to get at this yellow jacket hive that had been built. The bee's had come in a small opening on the front of the house. Thankfully, because it's winter, the hive was empty except for a few dead bee's scattered here and there. The yellow jacket hotel we thus named it had 11 floors and in spite of the creepy fact, having a hive in your house and merely inches away from Mom's head where she would stand to do her laundry. The work these bee's did on this hotel hive is actually quite beautiful and intricate. Still...another reminder that I'm allergic and need to get my epipen renewed!
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Hello Pamme,
...the hive's not really empty if it’s a healthy hive. There are one or more queens in it, waiting for spring. At the right temp, they'll emerge and scout for a suitable site for a new ground nest. At least that’s how it works for normal outdoor underground nests. Did that nest in the laundry room have some hibernating queens in a indoor place, where the temp is obviously above-normal all winter for an hive? Good question.
I once encountered two huge yellow jacket-like insects, each more than an inch long, buzzing at the windows of the upstairs bedroom in my Virginia suburban house in March. I figured they’d come out of an inexpertly finished closet that a relative had added to the room. A closet where the sheetrock didn’t fit concisely, exposing entry to the under-roof space. Both seemed desperate to get out, so I let them out. Never happened again.
Yellowjackets give a painful sting, but they are also flower pollinators. I usually put a small cage around the ground nests when I discover them in the summer. Keep your distance from the cage and you’re safe from attack. I once ran over a ground nest with a motorized lawn mower and got attacked, but that’s another story.
--Friend Susan
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