Yellow jackets are social wasps, similar to honey bees. Unlike bees, however, they don’t make honey or nectar; rather they feed on a variety of foods.
These pests often congregate around outdoor food sources, like garbage cans and picnic tables. Furthermore, they enjoy eating sugary treats and beverages.
Contents
Adults
Yellow jacket bees feed as adults on carbohydrates, sugars and nectar. These provide energy for their flight as they assist plants with pollination as well as providing essential nutrition for their development.
However, as the season changes and flowers and berries become scarcer, adult yellow jackets turn their attention towards other foods. Meat and fish are favorites for larvae while workers seek other meats or insects that can be chewed up for their brood.
If you are hosting a barbeque or picnic, make sure to clean up food scraps promptly and cover trash cans and bins with lids. Doing this will prevent yellow jackets from accessing your property and its resources.
Yellow jacket nests are typically underground or in cavernous spaces like eaves and attics. Each nest contains between 2,000 to 4,000 worker yellow jackets (all female), some drones, and up to 50 queens at a time.
Larvae
Yellow jackets feed their larvae through trophallaxis, or feeding. Adult Yellow Jackets provide sugar to the larvae which in turn provides protein for growth and development into pupae.
When larvae become hungry, they wiggle around in their cells to alert an adult worker of their need for food. The worker collects the meal from an insect, meat or fruit source and chews it back into a paste at the nest.
Food exchange is essential for the development of these stinging wasps, as without it their larvae wouldn’t have enough protein to mature into adult wasps.
The yellow jacket’s diet changes seasonally. In spring and summer, they will fly from flower to flower, feeding off nectar as they go.
In the fall and wintertime, bats often seek shelter in hollow logs, stumps, ground-level tree cavities or other protected places. Unfortunately, their nests are often destroyed by small carnivores like skunks, opossums and armored armadillos.
Pollinators
Bees are invaluable pollinators, providing their honey to feed their larvae and helping control pest populations around gardens and commercially grown produce at certain times of year. Their honey helps feed these little creatures a nutritional boost that other pollinators don’t have access to.
Bees also transport pollen around their back legs or underneath their abdomens, where it can be utilized by other insects in a process known as trophallaxis.
Pollinators are beneficial, but they can also be a nuisance. Unfortunately, many people are allergic to bee stings and experience life-threatening reactions when stung by yellow jackets or paper wasps.
Yellow jackets not only pollinate crops, but they are beneficial predators of pests like caterpillars and harmful flies. Unfortunately, when their numbers increase during late summer and early fall, yellow jackets can become a nuisance in your yard.
Food Sources
Yellow jacket bees feed on a wide range of flowers and fruits, making them an invaluable asset to gardeners as they fly from flower to flower collecting nectar or pollen.
As temperatures rise, yellow jacket bees begin to focus their attention on berries and fruits as energizing sources of energy for small insects. You may spot them buzzing around ripe or fallen fruit that has fallen onto your lawn or trees.
They feed on honeydew produced by aphids and scale insects, as well as meat from carcasses or garbage, sugary foods and drinks (especially during late summer and fall when natural food sources become scarce).
These bee-like wasps build nests on trees or bushes, usually out of paper-like material chewed from cellulose fibers. To feed their colony, they depend on a queen, male drones and workers; each spring they lay hundreds of eggs which eventually hatch into adults.
