Pest or Pest-Preventer – a Closer Look at Yellow Jackets

by Crystal Cockman

October 6, 2015

While gathering apples from off my grandmother’s tree, or picking up persimmons early in the season, we had to deal with a pesky little insect – the yellow jacket. In fact, they had a colonial home in a stump near our persimmon tree. Fortunately I’ve only ever one time encountered a yellow jacket nest while walking in the woods and was able to get through it quickly enough to only suffer three minor stings. They are all too common though even outside of the deep woods, and I was reminded about them again when one flew over to bug me while trying to eat my lunch outdoors.

Yellow jackets are sometimes mistakenly called bees but are actually a predatory wasp. They are around a half an inch in length and have black and yellow bands across their abdomens. They have stingers with small barbs and can sting repeatedly, though only the females of the species can sting. Their nests are paper-like and are built from wood fibers the yellow jackets chew into a quick-drying pulp like substance. They build their nests on the ground or sometimes in walls of structures, and they will defend their nest site.

They live in colonies with workers, queens and drones, and one colony can have as many as 5,000 members. The colonies only persist for one year though, and only the fertilized queens of the species overwinter and survive until the next spring. In winter the queen enters diapause, or a state of dormancy, until late spring or early summer when they emerge and build a small paper nest and lay a small number of brood to start off with. Those larvae will emerge as female worker bees that then take over the feeding of additional larvae. Food may consist of fruit or other insects.

The species we have commonly around here are the Eastern Yellow Jacket (Vespula maculifrons). They are found all across eastern North America. The first insect I was ever stung by was a yellow jacket, and that’s not surprising when you learn that virtually one-half of all insect stings are from yellow jackets. They can pose a bigger problem still for people who are allergic. When one stings they release a pheromone that attracts the other yellow jackets near the nest and prompts them to sting the target, as well.

However, as much of a pest as they are, yellow jackets are not all bad. They exhibit a form of commensalism, a type of symbiosis whereby one organism benefits and another neither benefits nor is harmed. A species of house fly lays its eggs on the outer portion of the yellow jacket’s nest. Their larvae then fall to the ground and eat the waste products of the yellow jacket nest. In addition, they are even beneficial to humans in one regard, as they are known to be good at killing pests like caterpillars, and particularly pests that eat crops and ornamental plants. So although they can certainly be considered a pest in and of themselves, they do have a positive side, as well. That’s perhaps easier to remember when you can stay safe from their nest locations and away from their painful stinging reminders to keep your distance.