Yellowjackets....In January????

[BigFish]

Putting up the tird wall in my new shop today and all of a sudden I notice a yellowjacket flying closeby....thought it was an aberation but after a few minutes...there was about 20 of them swarming around my saw table....so I go to Homies to get some insecticide....when I get back there are around 100 yellowjackets flying around my work table and the wall????? My best guess is when I took the old wall out last week....I took their nests with it....and they came looking for them but they were not there? Do bees hibernate? In the nest or in the ground? Just curious!

[thefishingfreak]

i saw them today too.
either you gotta nest or something smells nice to them in the shop.

[afterhours]

maybe they followed you from abbington?

[chris L]

or maybe its the warm weather that brings them out . they make good bait !

[Biteme]

The queens are fertilized in the fall and hibernate anywhere they want in the winter. The queens start to get active when the weather starts to warm and the cycles starts all over again. The rest of the nest dies with the colder weather. I have never had a customer complain of hundreds of yellowjackets this time of year. Sometimes they scream about a couple that come out of hibernation with this crazy weather. They should be pretty lethargic, just suck them up with a vacum. Will kill for plugs!

[TheSpecialist]

Yellow jackets also hibernate, when we open telephone splice cases on the pole they will be in there, moving at super slow speed. With the warm weather we have been having it wakes them up, once the temp starts to dip the will go back into hibernation mode. I hate wasps, bees yellow jackets they always seem to get me

[ProfessorM]

Bee's, Honeybee's are a different animal than a wasp, yellowjacket. Yellowjackets,wasp's, are meat eaters. They eat other insects. Honeybee's survive on pollen and nectar. You can winter over honeybee's. They ball up in the hive and go into a state of sleep or slow metabolism. They rotate from the inside out in the ball so everyone gets to be in the middle, where it is warmer. They do eat small amounts during the winter. They will also be wiped out by a hard winter even in ideal shelter. You need to leave enough honey in the hive for them to eat to survive the winter when you harvest it. In the spring they need to be fed sugar water to keep them going until things start flowering. A lot of NE beekeepers just order new bees every spring, thru the mail, and don't bother to try to keep alive all winter. I was under the impresssion yellowjackets, wasp's, do also do this but usually die during the winter from lack of food and a warm spot, unless it is a mild winter. They probably became active because they had a good hiding spot and survived so far and the warm day tricked them into thinking the winter was over. Not unusual to see some stumbling around in the fall after a cold spell. They look like they are drunk, very lethargic. Probably more than you wanted to know. I know about the honeybee, a truly remarkable and essential creature, but am no expert on the yellowjacket, wasp but think most die each winter. P.