Yellowjacket Control—Now is
the Best Time to Do It
Unlike honeybees (Apis mellifera), which winter as an entire
colony containing thousands of individual bees, yellowjacket wasps
(Vespula vulgaris, Vespula germanica) do not winter as colonies.
Only mated yellowjacket queens survive winter in a hibernating state,
hidden in protected places like soil cavities, leaf litter, compost
piles, hollow logs, under bark, stumps, firewood (remember this
when you bring it inside!) and behind wall siding. They start hiding
in these places around November and will stay there until the temperatures
start to become spring-like in April. Then the queens, which are
about 3/4 of an inch (19mm) long, with alternating black and yellow
stripes on their bodies, emerge again, feed on insect prey and nectar
sources and start looking immediately for a new nest-site.
Potential and preferred sites include uninhabited rodent burrows,
clustered tree branches, dense shrubs, garages, sheds, attics, spaces
behind wall siding, under eaves on buildings, under porches, and
inside buildings in hollow walls and floors. After they choose a
site, the queens start building a little paper-like nest using weathered
wood, bark and their own saliva as building materials. The initial
nest contains not more then 40-50 cells in which the queen lays
one egg per cell. It takes around a month for the eggs to turn into
adult worker wasps. During the summer month the nest will grow to
a population of several thousand individuals.
It is with good reason that I described the behavior of the yellowjacket
queens and their initial nest building in such detail – because
it is exactly the biology of the yellowjackets which allows you
to easily and efficiently control them in early spring around your
house. You only have to deal with a single wasp, and you have a
whole month to do so before the nest begins to grow. Here are a
few pointers on yellowjacket control:
- Tour and scout your property regularly in early spring for
potential nest-sites and yellowjacket queens on their "nest-hunting"
flights.
- Fill rodent burrows with soil, check the siding of your house,
garage and shed for openings and cracks and fill them or apply
wire screen to prevent the queens from entering. Wire screen also
works excellent for porches and on attic ventilation openings.
And it will protect you for more than just yellowjackets!
- If you encounter a queen that has already started its initial
nest, get the fly swatter out, kill the queen and remove the nest.
Not the other way around, because the queen will defend the nest!
If you are not brave enough to do it (it is only a single wasp,
but I know they are quite intimidating), you can place a few readily
available traps close to the locations on your property where
you want to prevent nest building. These traps use either a wasp
specific smell (pheromone) or the smell of food to attract and
trap them.
April - May 2002: Viburnums:
Shrubs with Four Season Interest | Discouraging
Canada Geese | Yellowjacket Control—Now is the Best Time
to Do It | Growing Orchids |
