What are these bees please.

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Flyingcursor
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What are these bees please.

Post by Flyingcursor »

About two weeks ago, in a rarely mowed section of my yard, I mowed over a nest of bees.
This has occured numerous times and the usual result is a severe reprisal on the part of the bees. I've been stung so many times I've lost count. But not this time. In fact, not only did these bees not attack me but they didn't even appear excited. This lack of violence encouraged me to examine them a bit closer.
Today I took some pictures hoping somone could help identify them.
Could they be...honey bees? Whatever they are, they're the coolest little dudettes I've ever seen.
I should add that I sat in a virtual cloud of these things while taking the pictures and not once did I hear them buzz in anger or fear.

From this picture you may think it's a yellow jacket. It isn't.
Image

Three more.
Image

I decided some scale was in order.
Image

Again
Image

For good measure.
Image

And, because I felt confident they weren't angry:
Image

Anyone have an idea?
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Post by s1m0n »

Those look like wasps, to me, not bees at all. I'm no entemologist, but I've never met a bee who lived underground, either. Wasps do, but those wasps sting and are fairly aggressive.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Post by Tyghress »

http://bugguide.net/node/view/35661

that'll give you a starting place....but not bees, definitely.

Still, I like their color pattern <toothy Grin>
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Post by djm »

That's what we would call a yellow jacket in these parts, and no, they're not too ornery as the temperatures start to cool.

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Post by Bloomfield »

Sand wasp or paper wasp?
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Denny
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Post by Denny »

Bloomfield wrote:Sand wasp or paper wasp?
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Post by s1m0n »

Bloomfield wrote:Sand wasp or paper wasp?
Not a paper wasp if they're living underground.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Post by Jayhawk »

They look like this, right? Image

If so, they're eastern yellow jackets, they live underground a lot of the time, and as already mentioned they're rather mellow when it's cooler.

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Post by WyoBadger »

Yep, definitely some sort of yellow jacket. Out here they tend to live in hollow trees, but I believe sometimes underground too. Many bees, especially some kinds of bumblebees, live in holes in the ground.

Question: When the critters stung you before, did they leave their stingers in you (you'd know, because you would have to scrape and/or pull them out), or did they just zap you and go their merry way? If the former, bees. If the latter, wasps/hornets/yellowjackets.

Perhaps the difference in their attitude is indeed the temperature. I advise against repeating your experiment when it warms up.

Either way, don't plan on getting any honey out of them.

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Post by Lambchop »

Oh, EEEEEEK!!!!!! Those are yellow jackets! If you've been attacked after mowing over them before, you are incredibly fortunate that you are still alive.

Actually, I see that in colder climes the hive can't winter over, so you may be spared the horror of hundreds coming at you at once.

I don't know how many deaths your area has from them, but we have a couple every year, as well as deaths of animals.

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STILL MORE! The yellow jacket part is after all that scorpion stuff--just scroll down. Might want to close your eyes, too.
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Post by Flyingcursor »

So what I have then is a calmer, smaller version of yellow jacket.

The ones that got me in the past were indeed yellow jackets, not bees. Except they were much larger. Nearly twice the size of these.

These pictures were taken on the sunny side of the yard where it was quite warm both on mowing day and yesterday. I guess I need to decide whether to let the hive continue. Who knows, next year they could be mean.
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Post by Redwolf »

Yep...definitely yellow jackets. Hereabouts they live in the ground and in embankments, and they can get EXTREMELY territorial. I was attacked a couple of years ago when all I had done was walk past the nest on my way to my car, and my dog was attacked last year a good five feet from a different nest. Different sub-species seem to differ in how territorial they are, but the ones here are dangerous enough that we can't really tolerate a nest in close proximity to the house.

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Post by Jayhawk »

I think the aggressiveness of yellow jackets in the midwest is related to the temperature at night.

While your days may have been nice, have the evening temps been down in the 50s? I had a nest move into an old hay bale in our back yard one fall - days were in the upper 70s, but nights were much cooler. The yellowjackets were so calm my wife kept thinking they were bees...but they weren't. Needless to say, but they don't live there anymore...

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Post by rhulsey »

Yup, yellow jackets they are.

They are everywhere here in east TN. I ran across a nest while mowing the yard last saturday, and I went back afterward to give them a big drink of Sevin and water, and they chased me away. I think I have 6 or 7 of nasty little stings that itch and burn like crazy.

They are indeed territorial, and like hornets, they'll chase you around if you rub them the wrong way!

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Post by Joseph E. Smith »

djm wrote:That's what we would call a yellow jacket in these parts, and no, they're not too ornery as the temperatures start to cool.

djm
Yup, yellow jackets, aka hornets.
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