Yellow Jackets Are A Summer Problem

The summer is half gone, and as the season passes, behavioral patterns for the insects around us begin to change. Around this time of year, Russell’s Pest Control begins to get many phone calls about bees and wasps, particularly yellow jackets. Since you could be encountering these creatures much more often over the next few weeks, let’s have a look at yellow jackets and why they cause such trouble for people in East Tennessee.

Although they have the black and yellow stripes that we associate with the generic term “bees,” yellow jackets are, in fact, wasps (which makes them cousins to bees). We’ve covered some solitary members of this family before (cicada killers and carpenter bees), but yellow jackets live most of their lives in large groups.

A yellow jacket nest is started by a single pregnant queen at the beginning of spring. She emerges from hibernation and begins to build a nest for her future colony. Yellow jackets aren’t overly selective about their nest location. You can find their large hives hung from a tree branch, connected to the roof of a building, or tucked neatly underground with a tunnel leading out to the lawn. The queen’s nest is made up of perfectly symmetrical, regular hexagons, which she fills with eggs as quickly as she can so that she can get help building the remainder of the nest. In a short time, she’ll have all the help she needs. That single queen can lay about 25,000 eggs!

What’s interesting about yellow jackets is their feeding habits. The adults need sugars to survive, so you will find them sipping nectar like any friendly honey bee. However, the larvae need protein to survive, which sometimes earns them the nickname “meat bee.” These wasps will not apologize for getting the food that they need. They are aggressive foragers, and, in the spring, you are likely to find them landing on your cheeseburgers and hotdogs and leaving with chunks of food for their young. Actually, yellow jackets are also serving as pest control experts during this time; they willingly hunt other pests and feed them to their larvae. As the year progresses, the adult yellow jacket population increases, which means more sugars are necessary to sustain them. That’s when you find them buzzing around your desserts or even inside your soda can (yikes!).

People tend to have bad experiences with yellow jackets for one of two reasons. In the first case, people are likely to get stung if they flail and swat at yellow jackets that are foraging for food. These aggressive wasps will not hesitate to sting if they feel threatened, and people who panic increase their risk of a yellow jacket attack. In the second case, people run the risk of being stung if they block the flight path of yellow jackets trying to return to their underground nest. Most of the insects in this family have about a ten-foot flight pattern that they always use to return home. If a person invades that airspace, the yellow jackets could descend as a group to try to clear away any threat to their nest.

You should know that these creatures function like pack animals; if one yellow jacket attacks you, many more are likely to come to their companion’s aid. Unfortunately, they also have a nasty habit of pursuing their victims, so it’s best to put a lot of distance between you and the contested space if you find you’ve been stung.

We like to give good advice for readers who may want to handle a pest problem without calling a professional like Russell’s Pest Control. However, be warned that you should only deal with yellow jackets with the proper protective equipment, and you do so at your own risk. Although a yellow jacket sting may only result in localized pain and swelling that lasts for a day or two, anyone allergic to their stings can experience very serious and even life-threatening reactions.

If you are able to locate an above ground nest, you can try something as simple as knocking it down. Do this only while wearing a proper bee suit, and try to approach the nest in the evening when the wasps are more docile. Additionally, there are traps available for yellow jackets; these are most effective early in the year when you’re more likely to eliminate a larger percentage of the nest’s adult population. There are also insecticide bait stations that allow the wasps to take “food” back to the colony, and the food kills the larvae before they have a chance to develop. Even over-the-counter versions of those baits can be quite pricey, and you may be better off contacting a professional like Russell’s Pest Control for a free inspection before you spend money on a product like that. As always, you can give us a call or contact us online.

Fleas: A Pest And Plague

Since we haven’t had a good discussion about a blood-sucker in quite some time, I thought it might be good to post about the infamous flea since it can become quite a problem for many Knoxville homeowners at this time of year (I’ll spare you the puns about fleas and the “dog days of summer”).

The most common species of flea in our area (and in all of the U.S.) is the cat flea. Don’t let the name fool you: They’re more than willing to use any convenient critter as a host. You’ll find them on your pets that spend time outside, and they are also carried by raccoons, opossums, and skunks that may have nests near you.

Adult cat fleas, or Ctenocephalides felis, are extremely tiny and are usually black or reddish-brown in color. They are vertically flattened (meaning they are taller than they are fat), which helps them maneuver through thick animal fur with ease. Two of their six legs are oversized for jumping, and they have a straw-like mouth, which they use to suck blood from their unfortunate hosts.

You may be wondering why fleas are so difficult to eliminate even after the besieged pet has been dipped and scrubbed to within an inch of its life. The answer to that question is found in the flea’s life cycle. As is the case with many pests, killing the adults isn’t really all that hard. You can take your pet to get a flea bath and probably knock out most of the adults on the animal right then. The problem is that the young fleas aren’t on the pet at all; they’re hiding out at your house, and you will likely never see them until they emerge as adults, ready to suck blood again.

Let’s have a look at how their life cycle works against us. Like mosquitoes, adult fleas must have a blood meal to lay eggs. The eggs roll off the side of the host and land on the ground wherever the animal was resting. The fleas hatch from the eggs as larvae and set about looking for food and growing up as quickly as possible. Adult fleas only feed on blood, but the larvae are scavengers and can feed on most organic matter, including dried skin cells that you find in household dust or pet dander. In order to continue in their life cycle, the larvae also require a blood meal. They get this by consuming the feces of their parents, which drops off the host animal just like the eggs did. At this point, you’re probably feeling sorry that you wondered about fleas at all, right? This whole pleasant process can take as little as two weeks during ideal conditions, so, as you can imagine, flea populations can get out of control quickly.

Let us now analyze why this life cycle information is useful to us. It tells us that just cleaning your pet won’t do you any good. When freshly-bathed Rover or Whiskers lies back down in his favorite patch of sun light, he re-exposes himself to the flea larvae that are only days away from turning into those tormenting adults. This means that you must thoroughly clean the floors of your home as well as all pet bedding before bringing your pet back from the groomer. Vacuum as thoroughly as you can and wash pet bedding when possible to bring the fastest possible end to your flea problem.

This vacuuming is absolutely crucial because flea pupae are motion-activated. Normally, they wait until they sense motion to emerge because that usually means that a host is nearby. The vacuum will trick the fleas into emerging when your pet is not there, and then you can sweep them up or kill them with a product. This is extremely important because flea eggs and pupae are completely immune to pesticides. You must either vacuum them up and remove them by emptying the vacuum outside or kill them as adults. The final word on flea control is that persistence is the key. Be prepared to vacuum infested areas daily for at least a couple of weeks to be sure that all of the eggs have hatched and all of the pupae have been triggered.

Of course, this task may sound like a pretty tall order for a busy homeowner. We at Russell’s Pest Control have some impressive treatment options that, when combined with a bit of cleaning, can catch the fleas between life cycles and stop them from developing correctly. Give us a call or contact us here if you need some help.