REGARDING           Where are the yellow jackets?
 
Dave Green wrote a rather detailed post (8/30/96) about recognizing the German
yellow jacket, which is usually an annoying pest around our honey houses this
time of the year.
 
I say "usually" because this year I haven't had a single one bothering me or
my hives.  I can't believe it!  Last year, when I had a mite catastrophe in
the making, not only was my honey house overridded with these insects (I had
my "bug light" on continuously and had the scorched critters drop directly
into a trash can underneath it), but they got into dying hives to hasten the
demise of mite infested colonies which would no longer defend themselves.
This year nothing at all.  I even put my extracted supers into the apiary for
the bees to clean out, and not even these has attracted a yellow jacket, to my
knowledge.
 
What is going on?  Is this unique to my area (southeastern Michigan)?  Not
that I mind it, to be sure, but it really has gotten my curiosity up.  I
wonder if the varroa mite has invaded the yellow jackets.  This is kind of
far-fetched, but what could have happened to cause such a radical population
crash, the likes of which I have never seen before?  Maybe it was the harsh
winter we had last year (but we have had such winters before).
 
Any other yellow jacket experiences out there?
 
Ted Fischer