Yellow Jackets with Dr. Richard Zack (345)

345 - Yellow Jackets with Dr. Richard Zack

Speaker 1: Hey, DC beekeepers are in the house, 200 beekeepers and 500 hives strong, five of us here at the North American Honey Bee Expo.

Rob: Hi, this is Rob.

Emily: This is Emily.

John: This is John.

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Rob: There you go.

Speaker 1: Can you edit out the stupid stuff?

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by BetterBee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout-out to BetterBee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com.

Thank you, DC beekeepers, for that wild opening. That was quite a crew they had going there.

Becky: I love the enthusiasm. I think that is absolutely fantastic, and that was great for them to do the opener. Is that our first DC opener? Did I put you on the spot, Jeff?

Jeff: Yes, you put me on the spot. You actually shut me up. I don't know. We'll have to check, and our listeners can check, too. In fact, if anybody goes out there and look at our listener opener maps, and your state's not represented, if it's not colored in, leave us a listener opener, and we'd be happy to use you and have you open a show for us.

Becky: You'll be famous, too. That's right.

Jeff: That's right. Hey, it's the beginning of August. How is your honey harvest coming along?

Becky: I get stronger as the summer progresses, because I'm lifting heavy boxes of honey, which is exciting. I have something very interesting to tell you about how I'm separating the different flavors of the harvest. Are you ready?

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: I think I could write an article about this. I ordered different colored buckets to represent the different flavors of the season.

Jeff: Are you using five-gallon buckets or one-gallon buckets?

Becky: Yes, five-gallon buckets.

Jeff: All right. I didn't know you can get them other than white, or Home Depot orange, or Lowe's blue.

Becky: Right? No, literally, I have got-- The price is actually less expensive, and they're food safe, than the ones I would get at a local hardware store. I'm saving money. I have yellow buckets, and orange buckets, and I have pink buckets, and I've got white buckets with green lids. Oh, and I have red buckets. I am set.

Jeff: Do you mind sharing with our listeners and me your source of these colored buckets? We can put it in the show notes.

Becky: We can certainly, yes. It is epackagesupply.com. Also--

Jeff: Not a sponsor.

Becky: No, not a sponsor. They will be after they hear this. Also, Uline, which is a company local to us, they have them, but they didn't have pink, and I needed pink, because it color-coded with some of my branding. Yes, they're available in more than one location.

Jeff: That's cool. I had never considered a different color other than white.

Becky: I thought it was big news.

Jeff: It is big news. Well, one of the big things with honey harvest at this time of year, really, is beekeepers and new beekeepers, old beekeepers, deal with the sudden influx of yellow jackets and wasps in their bee yards. They see them flying around, and they get concerned.

Becky: They fight with the bees. I saw a video of it today.

Jeff: It can become very concerning. We've invited Dr. Richard Zack from Washington State University to the show today to discuss yellow jackets and what are yellow jackets, their biology, and to help us understand how is the best way to mitigate the risk that yellow jackets pose, if any risk at all.

Becky: Very good. Can't wait to talk to Dr. Zack.

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Jeff: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table, and we were able to make it a little bit smaller because our guest is located in Pullman, Washington, Washington State University, and Becky, of course, in St. Paul, and I'm in Olympia. Dr. Richard Zack, Rich, thank you for joining us.

Dr. Richard Zack: My pleasure. Thank you for asking me.

Becky: We're so excited to have another entomologist join us. Most of our entomologists are bee specialists, so it's really exciting to hear what you have to tell us.

Rich: This will be a little different today than that.

Becky: A little different, right?

Rich: Yes.

Jeff: I have entomology envy here. I feel overwhelmed by entomologists on this episode here. Thank you, Rich, for joining us. We invited here to talk to us about yellow jackets and the common yellow jackets, and what we call hornets or wasps in the United States. We're not talking about the yellow-legged hornet, the Asian hornet that's problematic in the Southeast right now. We're just talking about your common backyard pesky yellow jacket that attacks your fried chicken on your picnic in September. Rich, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, why you're an entomologist, and just a little bit about your background?

Rich: Yes. Again, I'm at Washington State University, where I'm a professor in the Department of Entomology. I've been at the university as a graduate student and now as a faculty member for about 40 years, so it's been quite a while that I've been here. I was never interested in insects or entomology until I got to college. I wanted to be a biologist of some type, and I took an entomology course, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a great professor to begin with and took more courses and more courses and then got a degree in entomology, figured out, "Well, what do you do with that?"

There are some options, but I was told, if you really want to do something, go to graduate school. I made my way through graduate school, finally graduated, and have enjoyed what I've done for, again, going on almost 40 years now.

Jeff: Quite the journey. It's almost like yours, Becky.

Becky: Oh, it's not like mine.

[laughter]

Becky: Wait, let me check. Rich, do you have a podcast?

Rich: No.

Becky: Okay. Then, no, we're different, Jeff.

Rich: No podcast.

Becky: My graduate career led me to this podcast, Jeff.

[laughter]

Jeff: Oh, I'm honored. Rich, beekeepers, this time of year, in August, September, have generally a concern with yellow jackets around their nest. When they're manipulating the hive, while the beekeeper's standing and watching the front of the colony, they'll watch house bees and sentry bees battle yellow jackets. It's a big concern for many beekeepers, especially first-year beekeepers. Can you tell us what is a yellow jacket versus a wasp versus-- Let's start with the very basics.

Rich: If we start with the basics, all of these insects that we're talking about belong to a group that we call Hymenoptera, and that has to do primarily with they have four wings, the wings are membranous, and the wings are actually hooked, a front wing to the hind wing, by a little group of velcro-like hooks that we call hamuli. Ants, bees, wasps, and then this group that we call sawflies, kind of primitive wasps, they all belong to this group, Hymenoptera.

The bees and the wasps, bees, we have an idea what bees are. I think when we're talking bees, most of your audience says honeybee, but most of your audience also knows that honeybee is just one type of bee, and in the United States, there are thousands of different types of bees, most of which we consider wild bees. We could talk a little bit about that, but that's not the point today.

All of these bees are-- Let's just call them vegetarians. They all feed on nectar and pollen, and they don't eat meat. I shouldn't say-- Every once in a while, there are a couple of weirdos. In entomology, there's always an exception, so there'll be a couple of bees that will feed on meat or something, but they're all basically vegetarians. Basically, bees evolved from wasps. The wasps are a group, and there are thousands of different species of wasps. Everything from microscopic wasps that lay their eggs into aphids, and their immature eats that aphid and kills it, to ones that lay their eggs in caterpillars, to ones that do all types of things.

The ones that we're mostly concerned with today are what we call yellow jackets, and then maybe some of your audience will recognize also what we call paper wasps. A paper wasp looks very much like a yellow jacket. It's usually a little thinner in design, and when it flies, it carries its legs hanging down. These are the ones that build their nests in your gutters, on your house, in the trees in your yard, et cetera. Those are the ones that we're concerned with today.

Getting back to wasps, all wasps are predatory. Wasps are meat-eaters. That's what they feed their immatures: bees, pollen, and nectar. Now, there are times of the year when we get to things like the yellow jackets, especially in the end of the year, August, September, where they're looking for quick energy sources, and they will start to feed on carbohydrates. That's why you'll see yellow jackets and paper wasps, if you have a little orchard in your backyard, actually feeding on maybe apples or pears or something that have fallen on the ground. You'll see them coming to your soda can and sucking up that Pepsi or Coke or whatever it is that's in there. They will feed on these sugars at the end of the year.

If we don't get into the entomology of it, the primary difference are, we've got the wasps are predators, wasps are feeding on meat, the bees are feeding on pollen and nectar. A lot of the biology is, especially when we get to honeybees, which are an insect that is what we call eusocial, and so there's the colony, there's the queen, there are the workers. In the yellow jackets, they are also eusocial wasps. Their biology is like a honeybee.

They have a yellow jacket hive, a colony that somebody sees in a tree. There's a queen in there. All the workers are daughters. Males are only produced at certain times of the year. The only value of a male is to mate with a potential queen. We see the same biologies that we would see in a honeybee colony.

Jeff: The common yellow jacket they can be ground-dwelling? They can be anywhere.

Rich: Depending on where you are in the country, we have about 15, 16 species of what we're going to call, for the purposes of today, yellow jackets in the country. Some of them occur in the east, some in the west, some are transcontinental, but about 15 different species. With very few exceptions, any of those species can construct what we call an aerial nest, which is the one you see hanging onto the gutter or in the tree, or a subterranean nest, which is basically an aerial nest built underground in an old mouse hole or in some rotting logs or something like that.

Becky: Rich, of those 15 to 16 species, how many of them are actual native yellow jacket species to the United States?

Rich: Oh, that's a good question. About 12 to 13 are native species. Then we have a couple introduced, what we call Germanica, the German yellow jacket. A couple of others are introduced. Over the last couple years in the southeast, in different places, we're seeing introductions. For those of you that kept up with the murder hornet scenario, the northern hornet or whatever, obviously that was an introduction, which we believe, Jeff, you may know more about this than I do, because you're on the west side where that hornet was. Supposedly, we've gotten rid of it now. We've exterminated it from the United States, but most are native.

Jeff: It's designated as been eliminated or no longer a threat.

Rich: That's what they say.

Jeff: One last question on hornets and bees. I know growing up as a kid, we would have the biggest problem with what we would call the bald-faced hornets, and just its large cousin, but the big golden or yellow hornets. We would group them as hornets. Is that the proper term for those large-- Are those still considered yellow jackets?

Rich: Those are still considered yellow jackets. We won't get into the definitions, but there's only one true hornet in the United States that was introduced from Europe many, many, many years ago. It occurs in the eastern United States. It's a relatively large species. Everything else is a yellow jacket, if you look at it from an entomological-- That has to do with morphologies and things like that.

Jeff: The cicada killer, is that--

Rich: No. The cicada killer is a totally different type of wasp. Cicada killers is a totally different wasp.

Jeff: I'm reaching way back in my childhood. Those were fun to come across.

Rich: We get a lot of people that find cicada killers, and if they've never seen one, they send a picture, "What is this? Is this the introduced giant, something that's going to be really dangerous?"

Jeff: "I discovered a new species." This is really fascinating. We have all these different varieties of yellow jackets, and they are in the fall, starting to look for quick protein or quick energy. Besides the picnics and the soda cans, what's their primary sources of finding that time of year? If there wasn't beekeepers around with beehives and picnics, what would they normally be naturally eating?

Rich: They're cleaning up insects. They eat everything from flies to caterpillars to grubs that they can pull out of places. Their main food is not the hamburger on your picnic table or anything like that. It is different insects that they can capture. I might take a minute. If we look at the progression of a yellow jacket colony, during the winter, there is nothing, unless we're down in Southern Florida or something, where actually colonies can go for a couple of years. In 90% of the US, during the winter, there are no live yellow jackets except what we call inseminated overwintering queens, which are buried under some rocks, in the leaves, someplace like that. They are waiting for the spring.

In the spring of the year, depending on spring, depending on where you are in the US, that inseminated queen comes out. She finds a place to start her colony. She can find a nice place up in the branches of the tree, or maybe someplace in your gutter, or she can find an old mouse hole that she goes down into. That's where we get subterranean aerial. She then goes out. She scrapes bark off of tree branches and stuff, and she starts to build her nest, which is made out of this chewed-up tree bark we call paper.

She will construct a nest about the size of a quarter. All of this is out of paper. She will build about five cells. She lays eggs. She goes out and finds some big fat caterpillar or something. She chews it up. She brings it back, and she feeds it to her developing larvae. Once those first five or six developing workers get to the adult stage, the queen doesn't leave the colony any longer. Now, her daughters, they're all her daughters, they go out and they collect the prey. All she does now is lays eggs.

They construct a larger and larger nest depending on the species. At the end of the year, we still have the queen. We've had generations of daughters. A daughter lives three to four weeks, perhaps. Now we're maybe in our third, fourth, fifth generation of daughters, but the colony has grown, grown, grown. Depending on the species, we could have anywhere from that that colony produced 500 individuals to that colony produced 15,000 individuals.

In the fall of the year, as it starts to get cooler, then certain things trigger the queen. Now she lays eggs that are going to turn into drones or males. Those males then come out. She also lays eggs that are going to turn into future queens. The drones and the future queens go out, and they mate. The drones die. If they come back to the colony, the workers just sting them and tell them to get the heck out of here.

The queen in the colony, the mother queen, she dies, all the workers die, and what spends the winter someplace else under some tree bark, like we started this conversation with, is an inseminated queen. Yellowjackets are annual in their cycle. One year, one colony. There are some exceptions. In Florida, you get colonies that might last two or three years, but then that's the extent of the queen. It's not like a bee colony where they can requeen and do all of that type of stuff.

Becky: That's important when it comes to controlling the colony. There's a certain point, if you didn't know they were there for 90% of the summer, can you wait it out until temperatures cool and food goes away instead of risking the impact of eradication?

Rich: If I'm a beekeeper and I'm in an area where I often have problems with yellow jackets, then what I might want to do is evaluate the area I've got my colonies in. Is, for some reason, this area prone to yellow jackets? If it is, I don't know, can I move my colonies? If I can, that might not be a bad idea. We believe that yellow jackets can forage for food. Usually, you'll see about 1,000 to 1,200 feet. Our studies go-- We think about a half a mile, maybe.

If you're in an area where you can get away from these developing colonies, that would be a good thing. What you want to do if you are worried about yellow jackets is early in the spring, when those queens are coming out, if there's any way that you can eliminate the queen, you're going to eliminate a potential colony. Spring yellow jacket control can be important. That's when, if you do have problems, you might want to put out some of these bait types of stations that you can buy online or in any hardware store or something now. There are certain baits in there that will attract queens. Every queen you eliminate is a queen that is no longer there to start a colony.

Now, this is not going to solve all your problems, but I walk around my house every spring after I cut the grass on a Saturday, and if I see a yellow jacket queen, I squash it. Ideally, that's one less one that's going to start a colony. That might be a time to put out traps or something like that. You want to eliminate the queens, and the queens will come into these traps. That's the time. If you look up in the tree and you're just out there, you're tending your hives and you see, "Oh, look, there's a little yellow jacket nest developing. Isn't that nice?" Get your leather gloves out and squash it because then you're eliminating that colony.

As I said, the colonies grow throughout the year. In April and May, there might be a couple of yellow jackets flying around. In August and September, that colony has reached its maximum capacity, and there may be thousands of them flying around. Now they're starting to look for food, and that's the time I think that they're going to, "Oh, look at that honeybee colony. Let's get over there and get some food."

Jeff: A hanging trap in August and September is really just a drop in the bucket. You're really not going to make any impact on the bees.

Rich: Psychologically, when you come back in a couple of days and it's full of yellow jackets, it looks good, but no, you're absolutely right. You have made no change in the yellow jacket colonies, yes.

Becky: Are these trap species specific so that you're not getting other--

Rich: No.

Becky: That's a problem then.

Rich: No. They're species-specific to yellow jackets. You don't get honeybees in a yellow jacket trap.

Becky: Don't get. There are so many beneficial wasps out there. You don't.

Rich: You don't get beneficials in those traps, yes.

Becky: You don't worry about the other maybe native yellow jacket colonies out there that we might not even notice?

Rich: We're just going to assume that any of those yellow jackets are detrimental to your honeybees.

Becky: Oh, let's not just assume that.

[laughter]

Rich: Well, but they are.

Becky: Not necessarily. If you have strong colonies, you really-- I don't want to control something that we don't need to control. I know that even though beekeepers see the wasps, a lot of times when you're seeing wasps in your colonies, and they have the lay of the land and they're in there and they're stealing nectar or honey, a lot of times it's because that colony had another problem and it starts with a capital V, Varroa. Varroa weakened that colony and really let those yellow jackets in.

Rich: Yes, you're absolutely right. If we fast forward to the end of the story, realistically, at the end of the year, there are a lot of yellow jackets out there. A healthy honeybee colony is going to take some damage, but that damage, that honeybee, will make no difference to that colony. That is not what is destroying your colony. I know if you're out there and you see them, it looks like it's really devastating, those few yellowjackets that are coming in with a healthy colony, all research points that healthy colonies are the best way to avoid, alleviate, whatever you want, yellow jacket damage.

Jeff: Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break. We'll hear from our sponsors. We'll come back and continue our conversation with Dr. Richard Zack from Washington State University

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Rich, I have to ask, and this is from one entomologist to another, they're not all bad, right?

[laughter]

Rich: No. They are not all bad. Yellow jackets, actually, if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, are a benefit. As long as it's not someplace in the yard where there's an underground nest, a subterranean nest in the yard where your kids are playing, or something like that, yes, that needs to be managed. There's no question, and most people would agree with that. If those yellow jackets are building colonies out in the back woods or something, they are actually beneficial. They are picking up all types of defoliator caterpillars that are feeding on your plants; they're really doing-- They're a cleanup crew. They are predators; they're eating a lot of what we would consider more damaging insects.

Indeed, they are a really beneficial group as far as insects go. Also, they're chewing up that tree bark. They're down in there, they're decomposers, they're bringing fungi and stuff into those areas to help decompose those old logs that they're living in and things. Unless they're actually doing something that is really damaging, they're in a place where they should not be, you can't tolerate them, and that's mainly kids and pets, and things like that; they are very beneficial.

Becky: It's interesting because if we go back to when you started talking about their diet and how they are carnivores, it's really the wasps or hornets in general that have made the adult bees their focus that we should be worried about, and that's the yellow-legged hornet in the south, and then the Asian hornet that we were worried about.

Rich: Those are two that are really-- they've almost honed in on bees and stuff. With those, that's a different story than we're telling today. Those are ones that we probably do need to figure out how to manage or whatever it is.

Becky: What we're all talking about is that when the yellow jackets switch over to that carbohydrate focus, then your colony looks really good to them.

Rich: Exactly.

Becky: They might fight to get in there, but they're not even after the brood, they're after the nectar or the honey that's in there.

Jeff: Rich, I want to just go back, because when we're talking about the biology, there's a lot of thoughts that came flooding through my mind that I wanted to cover for you, because as a beekeeper, I'm familiar with basically the life cycle of the honeybee. 21 days for a worker from egg to adult, what's the life cycle from an egg to adult on the yellow jacket? How long is that span of time?

Rich: We're looking at two week or so, perhaps not as long as a honeybee. If you go into a yellow jacket colony, we open up that envelope and we go in there, unless you really know, it looks exactly like a beehive, almost. The cells look the same, everything looks the same. We look in a cell and there's an egg and there's a larva, and the bees or wasps are bringing food to it and stuff. We don't see as much of a division of labor as we do in honeybees with the yellow jackets. Certainly, there are ones that serve a certain period as what we call guard yellow jackets, where they're around the entrance holes and stuff, whether it's subterranean or aerial.

They're just keeping track of what's going on around. If they perceive some type of danger, they may go and investigate that. I think we see a lot of the same biologies. The period is about the same that they live. I think a bee is three to four weeks or so. The same thing would be a yellow jacket. Again, all the workers are females. The biologies of those two are very, very similar.

Jeff: Do the workers also control the raising of the queen, then?

Rich: We don't see the extensive physiological interactions that we see in a honeybee colony. If something happens to that queen in the colony, then some of the workers can lay eggs and things, but that colony is doomed. That yellow jacket colony is doomed. That's another reason. In the spring of the year, if we get cold, wet springs, in general, we don't see as many yellow jackets later in the year, because they couldn't find food. It was too cold for that queen to get out there and get those first five or six larvae into adults, and so they disappear. They don't really have the abilities that honeybees do to hunker down for more extended periods and things like that.

Jeff: If they lose their queen, they're not likely to raise a queen from an egg in the nest.

Rich: No. If they lose their queen, that'll be the end of the colony.

Becky: Also, Jeff, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, males are produced at one part of the season. They're not going to be available all season long. Generally, they raise queens and males at the same time.

Rich: In a yellow jacket colony, as they perceive that it's getting late in the year, it's getting colder at night, et cetera, then that is the only time that males are produced in a yellow jacket colony.

Jeff: That's really fascinating because that does provide some more distinction between the honeybee and the yellow jacket, which we're familiar with. Has there ever been any attempt to domesticate yellow jackets of any variety? I don't even know what the benefit would be, but if you were trying to, I don't know, target a specific agricultural pest, then you bring in a bunch of yellow jackets to--

Rich: That's a good question. I worked for an individual for many years. He was a big yellow jacket expert. One of his great ideas, it was his idea, no one else's, was that we need to bring yellow jackets into things like apple orchards and stuff, let them develop, and then they'll go and eat all the coddling moth caterpillars. They'll do all of this, and we won't have to-- On paper, that sounds really, really nice, but he never found anybody that was willing to initiate that and get that going. It's been thought about, but no practicality.

One nice thing about most of the honeybees is you can treat them pretty poorly, and they're not very aggressive, and they're just going to ignore you for the most part. Yellow jackets are not tremendously aggressive, but they're not as friendly as honeybees usually.

Jeff: The great tool that beekeepers have for honeybees, of course, is smoke. Smoke does nothing for a yellow jacket.

Rich: No. It'll just aggravate them more.

Becky: It doesn't do anything to their olfaction?

Rich: No.

Becky: Oh, interesting.

Rich: Why do honeybees and yellow jackets-- They share another thing in common: they produce pheromones. They produce a pheromone that says, I am in danger. I am going to release this pheromone, which will get my sisters, whether I'm a yellow jacket or a honeybee, to come to the source of the danger and begin to sting. That's the basis of the Africanized bee. It produces more of this aggression pheromone. Yellow jackets produce quite a bit more of this pheromone than the honeybees do. That's why I guess a little take-home message for everyone, if you're out and you're at the picnic or you're wherever, and you are stung by a yellow jacket, the best thing you can do is run and get out of there.

Becky: That's not what I expected.

Rich: With a honeybee, you can become calm, and you can sit. Other honeybees aren't going to come, but when that one or two yellow jackets stings you, it is releasing an alarm pheromone. If that colony is anywhere near where you were stung, that alarm pheromone goes back into the colony, and they will follow that alarm pheromone to the source of the stinging, and they will sting. With honeybees, I think, and again, you'll know more, take it easy. Don't worry about it too much.

With the yellow jackets, if you're stung once or twice, a yellow jacket can sting multiple times, unlike a honeybee. If you're stung four or five times and you see three or four yellow jackets buzzing around you, take a run for 50 feet or so and just get out of that situation.

Becky: Assume you're closer to the nest.

Rich: Just assume you're close to a nest, yes.

Becky: At least start walking away.

Jeff: I can attest to the fact, as a young boy, we were in second level of my uncle's barn, jumping from hay bale to hay bale. We kicked up a yellow jacket nest. They blocked the exit that we climbed up to the ladder. My brother and I had to jump out of a window onto a tree, shimmy down a tree, and run across the yard to get into the house. We were covered with yellow jackets.

Rich: Exactly. I don't think you'd ever see that with honeybees.

Becky: Well, Africanized bees.

Rich: With Africanized, yes.

Becky: Otherwise not [crosstalk]

Rich: Otherwise not, yes.

Becky: That's very interesting.

Jeff: To your point, what you were saying, and of course, all beekeepers will know this, but I'll restate the obvious, the yellow jacket stinger is just a lancet, and the honeybees is barbed. It'll sting one stick, and that's the end of the bee, and you get stung once. The yellow jacket will sting and bite too at the same time.

Rich: Yes. The yellow jacket can grab on with the mandibles, give it a perch, and then it'll sting. We usually say one yellow jacket can sting you three or four times, then it runs out of toxin. By that time, though, maybe more have gotten there where that poor honeybee sacrifices its life to save the colony. Very altruistic.

Jeff: This is a fun discussion this time of year, and I'm glad we're having it.

Becky: Inside safe and don't drink out of soda cans.

Rich: At least look at the soda can before you take the drink. I don't know. You always hear the stories, "I picked up my soda can and a yellow jacket stung me on the lips or something." I think a lot of them are stories, but it does happen.

Jeff: This is fascinating, and I'll just pose the question to you both in terms of what does a beekeeper do this time of year?

Becky: I think it's really important that you recognize the fact that as soon as you have a nectar dearth, you have to manage your colonies differently. Part of that is making sure that not every entrance is open, and you reduce the size of the entrance so that you reduce the space they need to defend against anything from coming in to the colonies. Also, making sure the internal space is smaller. We're not at risk of swarming, so make sure they don't have too much real estate they have to defend inside the hive, so that your colonies are nice and full of bees with smaller entrances.

Then also take great care when you're not just managing your colonies. You don't pull a frame of nectar and let it sit out there so that you have both robbing honeybees and yellow jackets taking a drink and then putting it back into the colony with robbers and yellow jackets in the colony. Make sure that you're not exposing frames any longer than you absolutely have to. If you're feeding the colonies, you do not let that lovely, lovely heavy syrup out there available advertising, "Hey, you hungry?" Make sure that you take great care and not open feeding, but also not making sure that you're making it accessible. Keep it covered as much as you possibly can.

If you're harvesting honey, oh my gosh, cover those sucrose. Don't let that get started.

Rich: That was something I didn't know much about, but when I went through the literature, that's what they talk about. You've got to basically limit what those yellow jackets can get at. That's your best thing that you can do. If that hive is healthy, those honeybees are going to be able to fight off the few yellow jackets that are coming in. A little bit of loss, but nothing that's going to really harm that hive in the long run.

Becky: I would argue that your colonies are much more threatened by other honeybee colonies at this point because when they get robbing, they can do some very serious damage to a colony that's not well defended.

Jeff: I think the big takeaway is reduce the exposure and keep your colonies strong. You'll see yellow jackets; they're part of the environment, but they are not a threat to your healthy colony.

Becky: I have another question for Rich. It's just a little bit different. Are you ready?

Rich: I guess.

Becky: This is a big deal. If you're a beekeeper, you have most likely, in your journey, been brought to somebody's house because they say they have honeybees, and they are really yellow jackets. If you look at a flying yellow jacket and a flying honeybee, I'm not going to lie, it does take a trained eye to tell the difference. I'm putting you on the spot, but if I'm asking you the question, how do I tell the difference between a honeybee and a yellow jacket, what would you tell me?

Rich: In general, the yellow jacket is going to be more showy. As it's flying through, it's going to have the bright yellow in black. There'll be some sheen to it and stuff. It'll be half again, at least as large as that honeybee is. It's going to be a little large. If it's a paper wasp, then you're going to see those legs are hanging down there. When the yellow jacket flies, it holds the legs up against the body, much like a honeybee does. The honeybees tend to have a little more of a lazy flight, so they're going from area to area, where often the yellow jackets are flying through.

Yellow jackets aren't looking for any flowers or anything like that. They're a rapid flight and they're going through an area. If it's close to you-- Again, if it's flying around in front of you or something, the honeybee is a little more compact. The yellow jacket's a little more elongate and stuff. Again, I think you see it's much more vivid. The colors are much more vivid in a yellow jacket than they would be in a honeybee. They're a little subdued in the honeybee.

Becky: I've noticed, Jeff, I don't know if you've experienced this, but when you're a beekeeper, especially in the fall, you get yellow jackets and bees in the car or the truck. When you drive off, you have to let them out. Yellow jackets, they'll be let out of a window at higher speeds than honeybees. Honeybees are a little timid to get out the window, but yellow jackets, you can have one fly out of the window and you're going 55. They're like, "I'll do it," and then they just zip out.

Rich: Getting into your first point, we get quite a few people that submit things, and we get a lot of phone calls. "I've got this beehive someplace and what's going on." Most of the time, if it's anything, it'll be a yellow jacket colony. There then, we can-- If it's a beehive, it's, "Here's the name of some individuals, call them, they'll come out and be glad to take it from you." They'll take care of everything. If it's a yellow jacket colony, if you can send us a picture or anything, then it's like, "You can decide what you want to do with it. If it's problematic for you, call somebody or figure out how to take care of it, or we can help you a little bit there." If it's a beehive, do not spray them with anything. Do not try to kill them. Call someone. There are many people that would love to come out and take that from you.

Jeff: Dr. Richard Zack, we really appreciate you joining us this afternoon to talk about yellow jackets and the one hornet in the United States. Correct me on my taxonomy. It's been a fascinating discussion, and I look forward to having you back on a regular-- Every fall, I think we should have this discussion. It's a worthwhile discussion. I like yellow jackets from a distance.

Rich: That's pretty general, I think. I would agree with that. Thank you for inviting me. I've had a really nice time. I love to talk about insects. Anytime I get the opportunity to do that, I enjoy taking advantage of it.

Becky: Maybe we'll take you up on those thousands of bee species someday, too.

Rich: If ever bees-- There's been more and more work over the last few years now, more and more recognition of the value of wild bees, even to the extent that it's caused some consternation between honeybee people and wild bee people and all of that type of stuff, but tremendous value in honeybee. Certainly, when you look at what they do for agriculture, there is no way that you can replace that. It's nice to have some flowers in the backyard and have 30 different bees coming in and pollinating those and giving you something to look at in the summer.

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Jeff: I have a new respect for yellow jackets now. They're fun. They're not the enemy. They're just fun. Does that sound right?

Becky: It does because I think that the more you learn, especially just the social behavior, they're a lot like honeybees. You got to respect the defensiveness. I never want people to get stung, of course. If they're a threat to human health and safety, I totally get it, but when I look at them, I don't look at them with the hatred that many do. I look at them with fascination, and you just have to give it to an insect that is so successful. They're very successful, and they eat a lot of bugs, which really does help keep the balance out there.

Jeff: I also like it that when I'm out there watching the colonies and I see the yellow jackets, and there could be 5 or 6 or 10 of them flying around the yard, but the majority of them are not trying to enter a colony. The majority of them are picking up the dead and the dying honeybees that are naturally out front. In my eyes, I see them as cleaning up and removing any kind of disease risk that might be there. They're just cleaning up the yard as far as I'm concerned, so I'm happy to see them.

Becky: It's a different way to look at it. I don't know if we convinced anybody. That wasn't our job. We weren't trying to convince people, but I think when you hear more about yellow jackets as an insect and you understand that for the most part-- I have heard from Dr. Lewis Bartlett that they've been a little bit of a problem with Hawaiian beekeepers. I'm curious. I can't find anything about that, but I'd love to learn more about that. For most beekeepers, those yellow jackets are either a sign that your colony already had a problem with something, with other robbing bees, with mites, with something, and you're just seeing them taking advantage of that.

Jeff: One last topic is that several years ago, in season 4, we had a beekeeper on. His name was Zach Techner. He's on a second part of an episode, and I'll put the link in the show notes. He has a company that he collects yellow jackets, hornets, and wasps. Collects them for their venom. He freezes them and he sorts them, and then he bags them up and sends them off to a venom collection company. That's a side business for him. That's something that beekeepers can look at yellow jackets for.

Becky: If we could get that to work across the United States, where they're not using a pesticide to kill these wasps, but they're collecting them and shipping them off for venom, that would be pretty impressive. We just actually published or we're publishing it, I think maybe in September in Bee Culture, an article that's called This might sting Part 2. We go through all of the benefits of bee venom. I'm sure that it is the same for wasp venom, but venoms are this amazing natural remedy for so many different ailments. It's pretty fascinating. I think it's also using cosmetics. I can't wait to listen to that. I don't think I've heard that.

Jeff: It is a good episode. I encourage our listeners to check out the episode with Zach. Remember when you see that yellow jacket this fall, just like all insects, it has a beneficial purpose. Manage your colonies to keep them strong, keep the bee yard clean, and enjoy your bees. That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast or wherever you download and stream the show.

Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab along the top of any webpage. We want to thank Betterbee and our regular, longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping TodayPodcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

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