-- 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.
"Jose Grecos del Muertos"
We have a son who was thought to be allergic after he was swarmed and stung several times by some yellow jackets when he was about 4 years old. From that time on until we finally had serum testing done and found he was not allergic to any bees/wasps/hornets, it was all our war on the buggers around here. If it flew, it died.
Yeah. It's one of my top favs...
LOL It looks like Winston, the background looks like Ontario, but the American flag on the hood says it probably isn't. I thought of him, too, when I posted it.
That is scary even to think about
bttt
Perfect illustration of the cure being worse than the disease!
I hate those things.
Don't block the entrance if they are living in the holes/cracks in the mortar between your bricks. They will find a way out even if they have to eat holes in your drywall. :(
I left a piece of carpet on my porch for about 3 months (I know, I know) and damned if there wasn't a HUGE jacket nest in there. How I got away with only 3 stings is a miracle.
Creepy looking too.
I was mowing a friends field for him, he was getting a little long in the tooth to do it himself, and while I was mowing, I hit a Yellow Jacket nest.
One of the things got tossed up onto the side of my head and stuck under my ear and eyeglasses.
It must have stung me 4 or 5 times before I finally squished the little bugger, but I was running for my life at the same time, as those buggers swarmed out of the ground.
It was incredible, and I told my friend that I would not be mowing his field again.
I probably had 15 stings, I got real lucky.
Yes you are right Pharmboy.
In a way, he doesn't even look real.
I don't blame you for not wanting to mow that field again. I've been stung a couple of times and found out that it is very, very painful.
If you are going to do a job, do it right. You, sir, are nothing if not thorough.
LOL!
Right. And don't think that putting duct tape over the holes they are chewing in your drywall will help the situation.
"I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves." -- Kent Brockman
Now that is a clever idea. Do you put a little insecticide in the sweeper drum for them to snack on, or does the express trip through the hose kill them? I bet he was a little nervous first time he peeked in the shop vac full of ???
I used to hate late summer - it meant it was time to mow hay. Hay fields usually were home to nests of those little black bees. Naturally, the density of the nest would stop up the mower when you hit it. So there you would sit, smack dab on top of the nest getting stung from one end to the other. Those little black bees could sting you half a dozen times or more each. I would have lines on stings all over. Hurt like the dickens. I used to carry two tennis rackets on the tractor. I looked like a windmill out there fighting them. I have gotten into some nests so big, I would have to leave the tractor and sneak back out there at night and get it.
The yellow jackets around here in VA bite or sting depending on their mood.
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