I seldom question God’s wisdom. But seriously, Lord, why yellow jackets? Some folks mistakenly call them bees, but they are actually wasps — and wasps of the worst kind.
Yellow jackets are anti-social, mean-spirited and aggressive. They also sting with a relish uncommon among living things. And while a bee will sting only if disturbed, these things will actually go looking for things to zap.
A honey bee can sting only once, and then it dies. Yellow jackets can use their weapons repeatedly, and with a vengeance only the most disturbed mind could conceive.
There are other wasps, of course, but their personalities pale in comparison with the yellow jacket. Mud daubers build clay nests on the sides of buildings. Paper wasps – those common brown and black fellows – occupy the same real estate. Even the bald-faced hornet mostly keeps to himself in his cone-shaped nest in the upper branches of your maple tree. Don’t bother them, and they won’t bother you is their motto. Live and let live. Not only that, but when you know where they are, you can easily stay clear of them.
Not so the yellow jacket. He can live anywhere. In the ground, a hollow log, in a pile of rotting leaves, even in a chink in some corner of your house. Walk nearby, and they will come and get you.
As bad as that is, it gets worse. A typical yellow jacket nest will have some 5,000 workers and as many as 15,000 insane adults. And all of them seem to have but one thing on their mind – – the destruction of the human race.
Don’t tell me these insects are beneficial because they get rid of other pesky insects. I took biology, too. As a matter of fact, it was on a field trip with my biology class that I learned firsthand how unfriendly these guys really are.
And since you never know where they will show up next, I learned it again while planting trees with my dad. I only got three stings. He got a dozen.
I was attacked again while building the addition to our house. I hadn’t finished installing the trim around my studio door, and yellow jackets had moved in. When I let the door slam on my way out, the little terrorists went on a full-court press, and I spent the rest of the day moaning and groaning. Last week I discovered two nests in my back yard.
If there is good news here, it’s that the yellow jacket queen who is responsible for this mayhem dies in the fall, and the nest dies with her. In my book that is not nearly soon enough.
