What is accounting for super-sized yellow jacket nests being seen throughout the South?It’s a freak of nature that has baffled Extension Service entomologists
Until recently, an insect expert could go an entire career without seeing more than a couple of yellow jacket nests larger than a basketball.
This year alone, they’ve turned up 16. In fact, the sizes of some of these super-sized nests almost defy description.
Dr. Charles Ray, an Auburn University research fellow who works part-time for Extension, says the largest nest he’s personally seen so far filled the interior of a weathered 1955 Chevrolet parked under a shed in Elmore County ---- “and that’s when they drove large vehicles,” he quipped.
One nest encountered in an abandoned barn in Pike County was roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Equally astonishing is the size of these nests. A typical nest contains between two and three thousand workers and one queen.
The super-sized nests may contain as many as 100,000. One mammoth nest discovered in South Carolina contained roughly a quarter-million workers and as many as 100 queens.
Ray fears some of these nests may not even reach maximum size until late July or August.
One other finding has intrigued Ray and other researchers: the presence of satellite nests in close proximity to the large nest.
No one is sure why these smaller satellite nests occur, though Ray thinks they may be prompted by space limitations in the large nests.
One thing is certain: The presence of these super-sized nests
throughout the state presents a potentially serious human threat,
especially later in the season.
Anyone encountering one of these nests should not attempt to treat them
with a can of bug spray. As Ray stresses, without the right kind of
equipment, they’re just too big to get enough pesticide material in
them. Contact a certified pest control operator instead.
Ray also encourages homeowners and others who encounter one of these
super-sized nests to contact their local Extension office before
treating it. He and his fellow researcher, Dr. Xing Ping Hu, an
Extension entomologist and Auburn University associate professor of
entomology and plant pathology, are trying to collect as much data as
they can from these nests to gain a clearer picture of what is causing
them and how they’re best treated.
For now, Ray and fellow entomologists can only hazard a guess as to the
causes behind this freak of nature. They speculate this year’s
unusually mild winter was the main culprit.
This raises another question: Could global warming play a role? For
now, Ray says, that’s only wild speculation. Still, it’s a premise
that can’t be overlooked --- or as Ray explains, “It’s not beyond
the realm of possibility.”
If this is true, and the result is milder winters for the foreseeable
future, Ray says super-sized yellow jacket nests conceivably could
become a perennial problem.
