Yellow-Jacket Airport

Video of a nest of yellow jackets near my house, 29 Sep 2009. It looks like a busy little airport, with the wasps flying in and out all the time. I think they're preparing for winter.

And I realized as I was uploading the video that I recorded in QVGA rather than VGA. Damn. I'll have to get higher quality video later. Sorry.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• wasp nest
• yellow-jacket nest
• wasps
• yellow-jackets
• insects
• overwinter
• hibernate

[hawkint]

Yellow Jackets do not normally hibernate for the winter. The normal life cycle is for the entire coloney to die in the fall. A few 'baby queens' will mate in late fall, leave the nest, and survive the winter. These queens emerge in the spring and start a new coloney. All of the previous years workers, drones, and queens, have all died. The nest is not reused. However,,some Yellow Jacket nests (in the southern USA) will 'over winter' and NOT die in the fall. These nests can last for years.

[amachett]

Thanks for the info! I'm definitely in the South, so perhaps this particular nest will overwinter. Even after the frost we've had, they're still active.

[NCRedneck27603]

by the way, your description says wasps, yellow jackets are not wasps as they are aggressive and will chase you especially if you run, but wasps have a more defensive mindset and if you go away from their hive a few yards will stop chasing you. i know from experience, yellow jackets wont stop AND IT SUCKS.