-- Rob Carr
Posted on 08/24/2006 6:52:04 AM PDT by Sopater
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.
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| A yellow jacket nest engulfs the inside of a 1955 Chevrolet on Harry Coker's Tallassee property on Thursday. Gigantic yellow jacket nests have been found in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama. |
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-- Rob Carr
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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.
Talk about catching a buzz....
Not in Tallassee, believe me. A man's land is still part of his castle in that part of Alabama. Of course, don't ask, don't tell, still is the best policy.
We had a hornets nest vacuumed this week. It works really well. And free too. He sells the bugs to make antivenom.
For Yellow Jackets, I use gasoline. But don't light it. Pour in some gas and dump a cup of sand over the nest. You can do it the other way as well but I don;t.
Well, I don't have the problem, but I'll keep it in mind. I'm sure one of these days....
I just had someone kill the yellow jacket nest that was being built underground in my backyard just last week. They found a gopher canal and set up home in it. These things were HUGE. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I'm a pansy when it comes to stinging insects.
Not sure but "yellow jacket" that has ever attacked me in the West has bitten me - many times. Could be different species?????
"Was Rodan an insectivore?"
Definitely.
Thanks for the ping. I had read about this either in the newspaper or on the net. Probably the net because I remember seeing that picture of the car nest.
We have some humdingers of wasps, just hope they aren't part of this bunch.
Hey, he's a damn good husband! Thinks up lots of good things....
I wonder how big a Shop Vac they'd need for the nests we read about here?
That is one big nest, and I'm glad I don't have to clean it out. I wonder how they will do it? It sounds like it might not even get cold enough this winter to kill those things. Personally, I'd just sell the whole place and move up north where they are killed off in winter.
I'd move too, but aside from a bee-keeper, who'd want to buy? That's why I was thinking freon.... the cold blast of air will slow 'em down, prevent swarming, and kill them... glad it's not mine.
SO, just get a colony of Bald-Faced Hornets nearby and they'll soon take care of the local Yellow-Jacket population.
Here in east Tennessee I've noticed two different types. The first is the ordinary full sized yellow jacket. If I leave them alone, they leave me alone and I've never had any real problem with them.
Then there are the smaller ones, about 2/3 the size of the others. Those are yellow jackets from Hell. They're highly territorial and don't need to be directly molested to attack. I first ran into them about two years ago when a trades person was visiting and remarked on how many "bees" were flying around my front porch. I went out, looked, and they started stinging me. Fortunately, I was able to get into the house and call an exterminator. The second time I was mowing the lawn beside a patch of bushes in my front yard. They came out and stung me several times before I was able to get away.
You definintely don't want to get near one of those nests.
Ok, that just freaks me out.
That could ruin your day.
They are all female. There is also a wasp infestation in Fairbanks this summer. They have no purpose except to sting people.
Wow, I'll bet there's some suction in that baby!
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