It's yellow jacket sting time

These aggressive and potentially dangerous creatures are most active this time of year as they defend their nests.

By MAUREEN BYRNE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 3, 2001

SEMINOLE -- Some unwelcome guests crashed a picnic over the weekend at Boca Ciega Millennium Park. And they weren't ants.

They were yellow jackets. Lots of them.

A man reported the swarm to a park supervisor after his young daughter discovered them Saturday as she retrieved a soccer ball from the brush. The girl was not stung, said assistant park supervisor Dave Hollingsworth.

"She noticed the bees coming out of the ground," Hollingsworth said. "We went over there right away and sealed the whole area."

On Monday, Jonathan Simkins, an entomologist who owns Insect I.Q., a Tampa pest control company, sprayed insecticide on an area swarming with yellow jackets near Shelter 7. By Tuesday morning, raccoons had dug up the nest and shredded it.

Simkins said he has removed about 20 yellow jacket nests from the 182-acre county park south of Old Oakhurst Road since workers began developing it last year.

And he said he expects to hear a lot more requests to remove nests from places throughout the bay area in the coming months.

"This is the time of year they really start to develop into mature nests," he said. "I've removed some that were as big as the front of my pickup."

During the fall, Simkins said, the yellow jackets are particularly active, as they look for new nests. Most people find the nests of bees or wasps the way the young girl did at the park. They stumble onto them by accident.

Yellow jackets, a type of wasp, build their nests underground, Simkins said. Hornets, another common wasp, build the familiar ball-shaped, gray paper nests often seen under the eaves of a house or in a tree. Various kinds of bees make their nests in trees or walls or in the ground.

Yellow jackets are wasps, roughly the size of house flies, with distinct yellow and black markings and a few hairs. An individual hornet or yellow jacket queen begins building a nest alone in the spring, Simkins said. Once a queen has produced enough workers to take over nest-building and foraging duties, she remains inside producing more offspring.

The workers expand the nest, forage for food, feed the young and defend the nest. Like other predatory wasps, their diet consists mainly of other insects such as flies and bees. They continue to enlarge the nest until fall, when there may be hundreds of yellow jacket workers. Frequently, it is not until this time that the nest is noticed, Simkins said, although it has been there for many weeks.

The best thing to do after spotting a swarm of yellow jackets or hornets in a county park is to alert a park employee, Hollingsworth said.

Opal Schallmo, an urban horticulturist for the Pinellas County Cooperative Extension Service, recommends calling a professional bee removal or pest control company if yellow jackets are discovered at home.

"They're very aggressive and very mean," she said. "They are all over the place so people just need to be alert."

Typically, when someone dies from yellow jacket stings, it's because of an allergic reaction, said Dr. Maria Olivero, an allergist and immunologist with the Allergy and Asthma Center in St. Petersburg.

Allergic reactions include hives, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, a drop in blood pressure and dizziness, Olivero said. Symptoms can appear within minutes or an hour later. "If it is not treated promptly, it can lead to death," she said.

A normal reaction to a sting is swelling and redness that can last two to three days, Olivero said. Health professionals advise non-allergic persons to seek medical attention if they have been stung multiple times.

In September 1998, 2-year-old Harrison Johnson died after being stung hundreds of times by a swarm of yellow jackets in the back yard of a friend's home in Tampa. His parents said their son did not show any overt signs of needing medical attention until seven hours after the attack. An autopsy determined Harrison's brain had swollen from an undetermined amount of venom caused by 432 stings.

- Information from Times files was used in this report.

Facts about yellow jackets

Yellow jackets are highly aggressive at guarding their underground nests. They will attack any motion or loud noise perceived as a threat. Unlike honeybees, they are capable of stinging repeatedly, and when the venom is released, it releases a chemical that signals other wasps. The venom can cause respiratory and cardiac problems.

-- Sources: Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, University of Florida, Jonathan Simkins

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