In a message dated 10/12/98 6:06:04 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
 
> I have a question.  My grandmother has a pear tree behind
>  her house and there are two distinct types of bees feasting on the
>  pears.  We live in northwestern PA near Erie.  The first type of bee is
>  a ground dwelling type of yellow jacket looking bee.  The second type
>  does not resemble any bee I have ever seen before.  It is about an inch
>  to an inch and a half long.  It has a yellow abdomen that is very bright
>  in color and is rougly an quarter to a half inch wide.  The head, legs
>  and wings appear red.  Does anyone there have any idea what type of bee
>  or related insect this could be?  If so, please let me know.  It is a
>  really strange looking bee.  Thanks, Julia LeVan
 
     From your description, I'd say the smaller ones are german yellow
jackets, which are real pests. They were imported accidently to the USA, and
are like the starlings of the insect world, because they have no natural
enemies here, and they overpopulate. They even are a threat to native yellow
jackets.
 
    Yellow jackets are NOT bees, and I wish people would stop mixing them up.
There was a story on CBS the other day, where a medical doctor told about a YJ
stinging incident where a child died, and he constantly interchanged the words
yellow jackets and bees. That's pretty poor science and it makes our job as
pollination beekeepers harder, because it feeds public paranoia. We have
enough vandalism now!
 
    Yellow jackets catch insects throughout the summer, and feed them to their
brood. The brood secretes sugar for the adults, as they consume the insects.
At this point in life, they are highly beneficial, as pest control agents.
They do not work on flowers as do bees.
 
    In early fall, they stop rearing brood and the sugar from the brood stops.
The adults must have sugar to survive (their wing muscles use a LOT of sugar),
so they seek out sources. At this time, you will find many adults on
goldenrod, which has a lot of nectar.
 
   Of course goldenrod is falsely blamed for people's allergies, so they start
mowing all goldenrod as soon as it blooms. Indeed some communities have
ordinances requiring this.
Goldenrod pollen is heavy and sticky, so the only way you could get it into
your nasal passages would be to stick a flower up your nose; ragweed pollen is
the culprit; it can float for tens of miles in the air.
 
   Yellow jackets will seek out sugar in any place they can find it, including
garbage cans, dumpsters, your picnic, and even your sweet soda. They really
get bad if a lot of goldenrod is mowed off, leaving hundreds of thousands of
hungry, sugar crazed yellow jackets. A little science would go a long ways to
solving the problems that ignorant people create.
 
    Yellow jackets, and other wasps and hornets are often seen on fruit, where
they suck the juices. Honeybees cannot bite through the skins of fruit and
only can come where other insects have already broken the skin. Bees prefer
flowers to fruit juice, and if there are flowers available, will not come to
fruit. They do, sometimes join the yellow jackets in hot, dry falls, where the
flowers are absent or not yielding nectar.
 
    Your description of the second insects sounds like possibly cicada
killers, though I have not particularly noticed them feeding on fruit. They
could be some other kind of wasps or hornets, but are not bees.
 
    Here is a site with some more info on wasps and bees including pics:
http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/nathis/insects/mowasp/wasps.html
 
[log in to unmask]     Dave Green  Hemingway, SC  USA
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