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 YELLOW JACKETS &
HORNETS There are about twelve different species of yellow jackets & hornets in the Pacific Northwest. Hornets
are a type of aerial nesting yellow
jacket. Its nest visibly hangs in the air on a bush, tree, under the eave of
your house, or some place similar. Their colors may vary. Hornets are black
and yellow. The bald-faced
hornet is black & white. Both
yellow jacket & hornet nests are similar in structure, it’s a paper nest made of
wood fibers. Unlike the paper wasp nest, a yellow jacket nest has a paper
coating that is gray or brown in color. It resembles a paper machete ball with
an entrance hole towards the bottom. When
yellow jacket queens first start their nest in the spring the nests are quite
small, like a golf ball. Towards fall their nests can be very large. We’ve
been in attics where the outer paper coating of the nest was five feet in
diameter. However, most nests get to be just a bit bigger than a basketball
with a few thousand yellow jackets in them. At the end of their cycle the
queen will raise other queens for next year. Those queens leave the nest to
find a place to hibernate for the winter, while the original nest
dies out, never to be used again. Yellow
jackets are very aggressive and can be dangerous and cause considerable damage
to your home. If you find them going in & out of a hole in your house you should
have it treated immediately. They have a mandible like a carpenter ant &
can chew through your wall quite easily. In most cases they’ll take a couple
of weeks to do so, but if you spray their outside hole with a can of spray or
caulk it, & they get desperate for another way out, they can come through
much sooner. In
the Northwest there are several species of paper wasps & mud wasps, or mud
daubers. Most are black & yellow, but some mud wasps are black with a
metallic blue tint to them. These wasps are very beneficial insects. They are not
aggressive and won’t do any damage to your home. They do have a stinger
that they use to paralyze insects to eat, but they don’t use
their stinger to attack people. However, while wasps will not defend their
nest they will defend themselves. You can be stung if you swat at one or step
on it barefoot. Paper
wasps make small nests out of wood fibers & are commonly found
under the eaves or in the attic of houses & buildings. Their nests are
open & the honeycomb shaped cells are exposed. Usually wasp nests are
quite small (the size of a dime to hand size). Paper wasps start their nests
in the spring. A queen starts each nest & then raises workers. A huge nest
of paper wasps might get to be seventy-five in numbers, but most nests may
have only twenty to forty wasps on them. At the end of their cycle the queen
raises other queens for next year. Those queens leave the nest to find a place
to hibernate for the winter while the original nest dies. The nesting cycle
then starts again next spring with the new queens. Paper wasps can reuse old
nests from a previous year, so any visible nests under your eaves should be
knocked down. Mud wasps are very similar to paper wasps except that they build their nests out of mud. Mud wasps will make a nest resembling a dirt clod, lay eggs in it, leave food for the larva, & then seal the cells. Those eggs will hatch out the next spring. 253-226-2206 |
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PAPER WASPS & MUD
WASPS