Tag Archives: Apis mellifera

WILD BEE SWARM!

1 Reply

What is a Honey Bee swarm?

After the spring population boom, Honey Bee swarms are a natural response to overcrowding in a hive. When a Honey Bee colony outgrows its hive, the bees will make a new queen. The new queen stays at the current hive, while the original queen departs to start a new hive in a new location. She takes most of the worker bees with her. The queen cannot fly very long distances. The swarm stops somewhere to rest while the scout bees go exploring for a suitable location to make their new hive. The traveling mass rests in open places such as a tree branch, picnic bench, wall, doorway, and even the ground.

You can tell a Honey Bee swarm because the bees aren’t laden with pollen. You will not see orange or yellow pollen evident on the pollen baskets on their hind legs. The bees are not aggressive as they are not protecting a brood and only sting if provoked.

What to do if you see a Honey Bee swarm?

The best thing to do is to leave the swarm alone. Within a few hours or up to a few days or so, the scout bees return and lead the swarm away to the new hive location.

You can find more information here – https://extension.arizona.edu/bee-informed-warming-swarming

The bee swarm seen here occurred at the children’s campus at Philip’s Academy, which is adjacent to the butterfly garden that I designed and take care of. There are a number of White Oaks on the campus that are a draw to myriad species of pollinators. I love how the teachers at the  school used the swarm as a wonderful teaching moment. They created a list with the children’s names and took small batches of kids over to the swarm to look at and to take a guess as to how many bees were held in the swarm. None appeared frightened, and all were curious 🙂

 

Aerial Yellowjacket Nest and Why Yellowjackets are Considered Beneficial Insects

Leave a reply

Aerial Yellowjacket nest ©Kim Smith 2014Aerial Yellow Jacket Nest

Recently at one of my landscape design project sites, which is located within a public space, a very distraught woman approached exclaiming that there was a wasp nest in a tree down the road aways. She was sure it needed to be destroyed, despite that it was at least 30 feet high up in the tree and not any where near where guests might wander. I calmly explained to her that the tree was not in my jurisdiction and even if it was, my first impulse would not be to destroy the nest. I thought it best to learn more about wasps in case there were more calls for its annihilation and after she left, I photographed the nest. I was glad she had pointed it out because it was so interesting to observe the rhythms of the comings and goings of the wasps, which after looking at the images through my camera’s lens, determined that it was the nest of the Aerial Yellowjacket (Dolichovespula arenaria).

Aerial Yellowjackets are often confused with honey bees (Apis mellifera) becasue of their similar color. In contrast, the body of the yellow and black striped wasp is less hairy and thinner than that of a honey bee’s, and yellowjackets do not transport pollen.

Side-by-side comparison of an Aerial Yellowjacket and honeybee:

600px-Gilles_Gonthier_-_Dolichovespula_arenaria_(by)Aerial Yellowjacket

http://www.besplatne-slike.net Potpuno besplatne slike visokog kvaliteta.Honeybee with Pollen Sacs on Hind Legs

The native Aerial Yellowjacket is considered beneficial because it preys on many insect crop pests. It is also serves as food for a variety of animals including frogs, skunks, birds, and other insects (I can’t imagine eating a wasp!). Yellowjackets typically sting in defense of their colony and can also be a pest at picnics, especially in late summer and fall when they switch their diet from that of a protein-based diet rich of the meat of chewed up caterpillars and insects, to a sugar-based diet.

Aerial Yellowjackets ©Kim Smith 2014The nest is is a papery-like material structured from the worker yellowjacket’s chewed wood and saliva pulp and is typically only used for one year in our region. The Aerial Yellowjacket is so named because it builds its nest high up, as opposed to underground.

We left the nest alone, and so far, no more calls have gone out for its destruction.

Aerial Yellowjacket nest -2 ©Kim Smith 2014

Honeybee and Aerial Yellowjacket photos courtesy wiki commons media.