Yellowjackets did this. The Kidd’s Orange Red apple was still hanging on the tree.
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Follow up on my question from 1 year ago.
I have the answer for my own orchards and fruiting things.
I have been watching my red paper wasps for about a year… they eat larvae and bugs and eggs and worms of things on my things that fruit.
I have watched them cannibalize and scour the leaves of my fruiting things… they then fly off with them likely to take to the nest.
They are predators of things that some folks spray for.
So in my case by not spraying anything… i am giving them food to take back and make more babies that will eat more things that i dont spray.
Growing up my family sprayed the nests with Raid… my mom and dad would knock down nests with broom handles. Fly swatters would be used to kill them. I think my mom made a trap out of koolaid for them also.
They are welcome now that i understand them…
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I think observations are the way to go. In my neck of the woods, paper wasps and bald faced hornets don’t cause any problems, if fact the hornets are effective predators.
Yellow Jackets, on the other hand, consume everything in their path and are voracious fruit eaters.
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Yellowjackets and Bald Faced Hornets in particular… The social wasps which form large nests and can inflict a serious hurt on a person if their worst infraction is to wander too close. I know that they hunt and kill/eat other insects. Which if it’s a “bad” insect, then that’s “good”. But what if it’s a “good” insect? Do they fly along looking for a meal, pounce on some prey, only to “whoa, this is a good insect the human wants and likes, my bad… you be on your way”.
Or is it only “bad” insects which have a particular body structure or other aspect that tend to make them wasp prey?
They switch from wanting protein to carbohydrates around late summer / early fall. Just about the time a lot of fruit is ripening…
So does the good truly outweigh the bad? I tend to not go out of my way to kill solitary wasps, or social ones which form small nests. Yellowjackets and/or Bald Faced Hornets though, they’re goners…
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I was once attempting to put a new layer of board siding on the high gable of a haybarn during the summer. I was standing on a 40 ft ladder, nailgun in one hand, 16 ft green hemlock 1x8 in the other hand. I pushed the board against the wall and fired and nail. Unbeknownst to me, there was an ENORMOUS white faced hornet nest in the space between the square bales and the board siding. They started pouring out and attacking, and I literall have no recollection of how I made it down to the ground! One stung me several times on the hand, including in between my fingers. I lucked out though- it could have been bad. My arm swelled up to my elbow for days. I wont up taking steroids to deal with it. Needless to say, I waited until winter to return to that project!
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Birds use their beaks which leaves a distinct imprint whenever they eat fruit. Yellow jackets and even ants will drill into fruit and work from there to destroy it all the time here- the culprits all leave there tell tale signs. After growing fruit in the northeast for 30 years and observing things closely I now even believe that lady beetles will find a way to work into fruit, but that I can’t be sure of- maybe it starts with the wasps, but certainly not always with birds. When wasps are swarming a fruit tree they not only destroy fruit but intimidate humans.
Here’s what my AI app has to say about it-
Yellow jackets, like other wasps, can penetrate fruit by using their strong mandibles (mouthparts) and stingers. Here’s a step-by-step explanation of how they do it:
Detecting ripe fruit: Yellow jackets are attracted to ripe or decaying fruits because they are a source of sugar, which serves as their primary food source. They have a keen sense of smell and can detect the scent of ripe fruit from a distance.
Identifying weak spots: Once a yellow jacket locates a fruit, it examines it to find any weak spots or openings. Fruits that are overripe, damaged, or have thin skin are more vulnerable to penetration.
Mandible action: Yellow jackets have strong mandibles capable of tearing through the skin of fruits. They use their jaws to bite and chew through the outer layer of the fruit. By repeating this process, they create a small entry point.
Probing and feeding: After creating an entry point, yellow jackets insert their mouthparts into the fruit. They have a proboscis, a long, slender tube-like structure, which allows them to reach the sugary juices inside the fruit.
Enzyme secretion: Yellow jackets often secrete saliva that contains enzymes onto the fruit’s flesh. These enzymes help break down the fruit’s tissues and make it easier for the wasps to extract the sugary liquid.
Consumption: Once the yellow jacket has accessed the sugary juice, it feeds on it by sucking up the liquid through its proboscis. They continue to consume the fruit until they are satisfied or until they have extracted all the available juices.
It’s worth noting that while yellow jackets can damage fruits, they also play a role in natural pest control by preying on other insects, including crop-damaging pests. However, when their populations become too large or when they are particularly attracted to human food sources, they can become a nuisance and a potential hazard.
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Heh, memories flooding in to my mind… How many of you have hung tobacco in a barn? Were you young and agile and therefore got the top rung? Up where the by that time enormous paper wasp nests were. Not a fan… My grandfather would just grab and squeeze a nest with multiple wasps on it, bare-handed. Just right and fast enough, they couldn’t sting.
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We were hauling square hay bales and stacking them on a board floor in an old barn very late one evening just at dusk. My brother and I were working for a nearby @60 year old farmer. Farmer went into the barn and started kicking some loose hay into a corner out of the way. He kicked a yellow jacket nest. It was almost too dark to see so about 60 yellow jackets crawled up his legs inside his pants. Things got exciting, he came out of those pants faster than an Olympic sport and not one bit embarrassed as he beat the yellow jackets off his legs. We left the hay on the truck that evening and unloaded the next morning when we could see to spray the nest.
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I have a bad experience with yellow jackets and will carry that grudge forever. they cannot stay
all other wasps, hornets, bees and flying things are fine by me. they don’t bother me and I don’t bother them. we did have to take down a paper wasp nest last year as it was near the dog’s nap area and they were getting dangerously close to a battle, but we knocked it down and threw it over the fence at night, and they rebuilt there. which is just fine
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At any good farm store or brick and mortar…even online has many many products to kill bees. Any online search will tell you that they are pests, and also tell you how to kill them. Which is normal for being a modern day human.
Universities etc that study them say that they are beneficial.
Yellowjackets- Eat crickets, aphids, caterpillars and moths to feed their larvae.
Bald Faced Hornets- Eat caterpillars and aphids, deer flies and horse flies.
All of these bees are beneficial predators.
Its a personal choice if you want to take over their job as predators. You can spray them and also spray the things that they eat.
I got stung over 100 times by yellowjackets as a kid and had to be hospitalized. I got stung yesterday by a wasp. THE worst pain i have had i think was from stepping on a hornet when i was a kid. My mom had to give me several benedryls to knock me out it hurt like a stabbing poker for hours.
Each time i have been stung was my fault… and they were just protecting themselves.
Im letting everything live… i think they live here because i have things for them to eat… and i dont eat caterpillars or aphids or flies or moths… they can eat those.
Overall the consensus is to just kill them in case they might possibly sting you someday. I personally think that they dont want to sting anyone… because when they sting you it rips out their guts and kills them… they are not suicidal by nature. They just want to protect their home…and to be left alone to live their lives.
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Yellowjackets and hornets and a number of others are not “bees”, they are wasps. Bees die when they sting, honeybees specifically, I’m not certain about other bees (bumbles, solitary/mason, etc)… Wasps do not, they can sting repeatedly and do not die as a result.
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Actually, thats true of honeybees, which have barbed stingers, but not true of wasps and hornets, which have unbarbed ones. Yellow Jackets and Hornets can and do sting multiple times in a go. They can bite too, I believe. Probably they can meter out the amount of pain they want to deliver to some extent.
Its good to be reasonable about these things, IMO. I noticed yesterday an apple-sized white faced hornet nest in the small roof over my workshop door. Those guys are headed for reincarnation shortly. Im not going to run around and try to eradicate ever hornet on my property, but if I manage to run over a yellow jacket nest with the mower, as I usually do once or twice a season, Im most likely gonna give em what fer. The ones that pay me no mind will be similarly ignored
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Ive said it many times that the best way to get people engaged is to say something wrong…
I got stung yesterday by a paper wasp and i watched it lay there in agony and twitching after it stung me. It was already in the house so i put it out of its misery but i do think it would have died.
True they are not ‘bees’ or ‘wasps’ they are Hymenoptera, Apis, Vespidae etc… bee and wasp are slang…
Where i live they are ‘waspers’ and ‘mud dobbers’ and ‘yeller jackets’
Where i live… if you have fruit trees that means you need to have honeybee hives. Thats how it works i think for common folk.
The more scientific you get the more beneficial they are to humans.
The more rural and local you get the more of a pest they are to humans.
Grand scheme of things is that without (bees) i think we as humans starve to death and will have to spray everything with poison to remove all of the insects that they eat as predators. Insects could easily take out every crop that humans and the animals that humans eat consume.
Yes you can pollinate things with a paint brush and yes you can spray poison on everything that you eat if you dont like bees also.
Busy as a bee… i dont want to be.
To anyone who lives where pest pressure is real and has a lot of experience growing fruit this statement must seem a bit simplistic. Yellow jackets here in NYS do not reduce the pressure of any orchard pests in a measurable way I’m aware of- their primary diet is sugar.
Some years populations of them soar by Sept sometimes not, but I have to manage the same pests in either case and trees not sprayed don’t produce.
Of course you need to consider the affects of pesticide on beneficials and any knowledgeable manager does, but please don’t exaggerate the virtues of pests with benefits. In my orchard some beneficials really help, but yellow jackets and their fat bald faced sisters I can live without- at least I wish I could. I manage them by trapping them out when they first begin to attack fruit. Lots of traps.
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I mostly leave them alone unless the nest is in a traffic area. I squashed several paper wasp nests yesterday, while checking hickory/pecan grafts in tree tubes. I’ve seen the nests get large enough to interfere with proper growth inside the tube.
Any pomefruit that ripens after about the first of September here has no chance of making it to full maturity… the big yellow & brown European hornets mine them out, and are accompanied in that task by various paper wasps.
Had a yellowjacket nest in/behind a stone retaining wall at the lakehouse last year… anyone coming or going had to pass by the entrance, so elimination was required.
I’ve not mowed over a yellowjacket or bumblebee nest in 30 years, but have had encounters of that sort in the past, that made me jump off the tractor (had to chase it down before it crashed into the woods) or leave the push-type lawnmower to run until it ran out of gas.
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Eradicate them?
Do i get a 
if i say kill them all?
Like i said earlier… you can read from virtually every university or scholarly publication and the words beneficial to humans is likely to be used.
There is massive profits to be made by killing them as well so of course there is even more info of how to kill them…and why you should.
“Eastern yellowjackets can be considered a beneficial insect because they reduce populations of unwanted insects”
I do admit that with modern chemicals that yellowjackets are not needed. Modern chemicals also reduce populations of unwanted insects.
It really is simple or simplistic. You either spray for insects, or you let them be predated by predatory insects. It is a choice.
Humans have been growing fruit for over 11,000 years… as far as we can understand it.
They have found fossilized fruit 52 million years old.
Personally i think insects have evolved to keep each other in check without our influence or science… over the past 52 million years.
I like ‘bees’. I like ‘insects’. My choice and im simple.
I also like fruit.
So my last few decades on Earth i plan to CoExist… and not fight the land but live with the land.
Simple.
People come here with questions and the main point of the forum is to supply them with answers. Of course many organisms that we regard as pests also perform tasks helpful to us and there’s a balancing act that goes on, but I don’t think an explanation of that is very helpful on this specific topic.
I cannot even grow sub-acid nectarines here at all if I allow yellow jackets free reign. On bad years I can also forget about figs and even plums.
One doesn’t use pesticides at all to control yellow jackets, unless they are going after a nest- and I use a hose for that. I trap them by luring them with apple juice. No one but you has said anything on this thread about chemical treatments.
I can kill as many as I want and they will always return the following spring, often with a vengeance.
Maybe we need another section for gardening philosophy.
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That would be one section you could be a leader of for sure.
The question of the thread is are wasps and hornets keepers. I said Yes. .
Your rebuttal to any of my answers is for me to start another thread as if there is only one answer to any question.
There are many many products to kill… as all of these labels say Killer.
There wouldnt be such products available if it werent a good thing to do so. Obviously they are USDA approved and a tool in the toolbox for American Citizens.
Ive never seen an apple juice lure in stores. Chemical treatments are available and common knowledge.
I have a lot various Bees. Wasps, Hornets. I recongnized that they are not entirely bad or entirely good. It is hard to define good or bad simply because they do good and bad things throughout their lifecycle. Over the time I learned to live with them. I rarely got sting by yellow jackets, hornet, or bee. They really don’t have noticeable destructive behavior to my fruits untill later summer/early fall during the fruits ripping stage, when the fruits sugar level increased. I notice yellow jackets, bald faced wasps start to break the fruit skin and cause the fruit mold and rot. I leave them alone till the fruits started to ripen. Then I will hang the vinegar sugar solutions to trap some but not eradicate them all. I try to balance eco system in my backyard and promote the population of bumblebee, Mason bees, and honeybees by making bee houses, letting bee friendly plants grow throughout the yard.
Why is this discussion in the fruit growing category when it belongs in the lounge? I didn’t read the whole string of comments before, but now I realize you started this thread and you seem to have chosen the wrong category.
I only got involved here when someone suggested that yellow jackets cannot penetrate fruit unaided by birds which I believed to be mistaken and potentially harmful misinformation for an aspiring fruit grower.
What does the Spectracide label have to say about using their Wasp and Hornet killer to control wasps in an orchard?
If it’s mentioned on the label than the picture belongs here.
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