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Posted Oct 11, 12:15 PM

By Guest columnist, cleveland.com

Guest columnist Christine Barnett is the wildlife specialist and resident beekeeper at Lake Erie Nature & Science Center.

Every  fall, our outdoor hangouts are interrupted by black-and-yellow insects.  Bees are often mistakenly blamed, when it’s really yellow jackets that  are ruining the fun. Despite their many similarities, bees and yellow  jackets are completely different insects.

Let’s  start with their diets. Bees eat a plant-based diet, feeding on nectar  and pollen from a variety of flowering plants. Yellow jackets, on the  other hand, consume insect protein in addition to fruits, sugars and  other foods. As insects and other food sources become scarce in the  fall, you may notice more aggressive yellow jackets while you enjoy your  lunch outside.

The  physical characteristics of bees and yellow jackets are quite  different, too. Yellow jackets are more aggressive than bees when  protecting their colonies. In fact, most people who say they have been  stung by a bee were actually stung by a yellow jacket or other wasp.

Unlike  honey bees, who lose their barbed stingers when they sting, yellow  jackets' stingers are smoother and less likely to get caught in your  skin. The venom of yellow jackets is also more potent and painful.

While  yellow jackets are seen throughout summer, they become a bigger pest in  the fall due to their life cycle. In spring, a young queen will emerge  from her overwintering den in a rotten log or other small space to build  a new colony. She will choose a nesting site that is warm and dry, such  as an old rodent den, sometimes underground, under old leaf piles or  even in a crack in your home’s siding.

She  will lay a few eggs and care for them by killing and bringing back  other insects for the young to eat. Once the larvae grow into adult  workers, the queen will remain in the nest laying eggs while her adult  children scavenge food for the new babies. The colony will continue to  grow all summer and by fall can have 1,000 to 3,000 or more workers  living inside.

With  a higher population of yellow jackets in the colony, the colony itself  needs more food, resulting in more desperate and aggressive yellow  jacket workers.

In  the fall, the queen will lay eggs that will eventually become male  yellow jackets and next year’s young queens. The males and new queens  will emerge and mate with yellow jackets from different colonies.

After  mating, the young queen will find a den to overwinter alone. As  temperatures drop, the more food and energy is needed to survive,  further increasing the other yellow jackets' aggression.

Once the temperature drops too low, the remaining workers and males will die and the colony will not survive the winter.

So, if yellow jackets become a problem for you this fall, know that cooler temperatures are on the way.

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2020/10/dont-blame-the-bees-christine-barnett.html