Respond to:   [log in to unmask]    Dave Green, Eastern Pollinator
Newsletter, PO Box 1215, Hemingway, SC   29554
 
Cross posted to Socinsct:
 
    There was considerable discussion last fall of the population levels of
yellow jackets and hornets.  I don't recall contributing, as they seemed to
be about normal here.
 
    Something unusual to report:  there are a lot of yellow jackets still
alive.  In fact, as I have just completed a round of feeding honeybee
colonies, they are so numerous in some areas as to be a real plague to the
bees.
 
    These are the common ones (I have always called German Yellow Jackets), a
small one that seems to nest most often in holes in the ground.  They have
high populations in late summer and fall, often a nuisance at the Labor Day
picnic, getting into soda cans, etc.
 
   I had understood that they do not store food, therefore do not survive
winter.  I often see single ones (assume: queens) hiding in cracks in bee
hives during the winter.
 
   This winter some of the dry sugar feeders are completely full of yellow
jackets, perhaps 2 or 3 hundred per feeder.  There are a few in almost all
feeders.  Most of these have had to enter through the hive entrance, so the
bees are unsucessful at stopping them.  There are some dead yellow jackets
and bees at the entrances, so there is evidently some fighting.
 
Thoughts:
 
1.  Has it been such a mild winter that they have been finding natural food
sources?  There is some wild mustard, which has a lot of pollen and a little
nectar, but I haven't seen yellow jackets forage these (or any other flower
but goldenrod).  I believe they catch flies also, but thought that was mostly
for brood feed.
 
2.  Many of the hives that crashed from varroa were heavy with honey.  Are
the yellow jackets surviving by robbing this food source? How many of these
are out in the wild?
 
3.  I have been increasing feeding greatly in the past three years.  (I used
to leave a super of honey for winter feed, then supplement it with sugar.
 Now I have to remove supers to treat for varroa.  I have no place to store
the supers, so I extract them and feed a frame or two of honey into the brood
chamber, if needed, plus a lot of sugar.) Am I encouraging yellow jackets to
survive winter by supplying this food source?  Of course they normally have
the garbage at dumpsters through the winter.
 
4:  Is the inability of the bees to stop the yellow jackets indicating
debilitated bees?  I have been busy going back and plugging all extra
entrances, and reducing the main one.  We've had to be very careful with the
deeps of feed honey, as bees want to rob too.  We got them started in one
yard and they were finishing off a weak hive when we returned the next day.
 
-Dave
 
:-)   Cold here - only two days at 70F last week, think I'll head for
Florida!