The life cycle and behavior of honeybees and yellow jackets is quite different, so in several places in your essay, I was a bit confused which you were writing about. Honeybees store honey in order to overwinter and do not forage during that time, nor are the colonies typically very aggressive. The summer bees that produce the honey stores are a distinct generation of short-lived bees (a few weeks), whereas the overwintering bees are long-lived (several months). The colonies are thus perennial. On the other hand, yellow jackets, in most of their range, are an annual species (as you noted). Only the mated queens overwinter, the workers dying off in the fall, probably from programmed death. For the first phase of the annual cycle, the colony produces workers to increase colony size, but in the late summer and fall phase, they invest a lot of resource in producing male and female sexuals. These mate (outbreed), the males die and the mated females overwinter, as you noted. I am not convinced that hunger is the source of their fall aggressiveness. Here is an alternate possibility--- the colony is protecting its sexual males and females because these are its future generation, its only hope of having a descendant colony in the following year. Considering that yellow jacket nests have long been preyed upon by large mammals such as bears, they have a lot of reason to be nasty in the fall. They are cuing to large, warm, carbon dioxide-emitting creatures, and don't stop to ask questions.
I'm so grateful we don't have yellowjackets here in New Zealand, because I'm horrified at the thought of not wearing bright colours to avoid enraging them. My entire wardrobe is chock-full of lime green, orange and lots of other loud colours. I'd be doomed!
The video of that bike surrounded by a swarm is terrifying! I would be mad too if my food supply was shrinking. I will have to look more closely at the wasps I kill now instead of just immediately stomping them...
I was running a trail marathon in autumn about thirty years ago when I ran past a yellowjacket nest right next to the narrow forest trail. I got stung a couple of times. On my hands! I wasn't going slow, so the little beasties must have been riled up by some competitor ahead of me. After the race I talked to other finishers and almost all had gotten bitten! Lesson learned: don't run forest trail marathons in the autumn!
The life cycle and behavior of honeybees and yellow jackets is quite different, so in several places in your essay, I was a bit confused which you were writing about. Honeybees store honey in order to overwinter and do not forage during that time, nor are the colonies typically very aggressive. The summer bees that produce the honey stores are a distinct generation of short-lived bees (a few weeks), whereas the overwintering bees are long-lived (several months). The colonies are thus perennial. On the other hand, yellow jackets, in most of their range, are an annual species (as you noted). Only the mated queens overwinter, the workers dying off in the fall, probably from programmed death. For the first phase of the annual cycle, the colony produces workers to increase colony size, but in the late summer and fall phase, they invest a lot of resource in producing male and female sexuals. These mate (outbreed), the males die and the mated females overwinter, as you noted. I am not convinced that hunger is the source of their fall aggressiveness. Here is an alternate possibility--- the colony is protecting its sexual males and females because these are its future generation, its only hope of having a descendant colony in the following year. Considering that yellow jacket nests have long been preyed upon by large mammals such as bears, they have a lot of reason to be nasty in the fall. They are cuing to large, warm, carbon dioxide-emitting creatures, and don't stop to ask questions.
I'm so grateful we don't have yellowjackets here in New Zealand, because I'm horrified at the thought of not wearing bright colours to avoid enraging them. My entire wardrobe is chock-full of lime green, orange and lots of other loud colours. I'd be doomed!
The video of that bike surrounded by a swarm is terrifying! I would be mad too if my food supply was shrinking. I will have to look more closely at the wasps I kill now instead of just immediately stomping them...
I was running a trail marathon in autumn about thirty years ago when I ran past a yellowjacket nest right next to the narrow forest trail. I got stung a couple of times. On my hands! I wasn't going slow, so the little beasties must have been riled up by some competitor ahead of me. After the race I talked to other finishers and almost all had gotten bitten! Lesson learned: don't run forest trail marathons in the autumn!
If you can't tell the difference between bees and wasps, perhaps you shouldn't be writing about nature.