Trapping and hopefully identifying yellow jacket queens

[urbpan]

Yellow jackets have begun building their nests! This one built a nest inside the shed where I keep my insecticides (pause for laughter). It came down when I opened the shed door, and two yellow jackets came out: the one pictured, and a much smaller one. I caught this one with a glueboard in order to photograph the marks on the abdomen, which supposedly help identify the yellow jacket to species.



I bought a number of traps called WHY traps (Wasp * Hornet * Yellow Jacket) which are designed to be used early in the season to catch queens of many species of stinging insects. The trap uses three different chemical lures to entice the insects into funnel shaped openings, where they drown or dehydrate, depending which side the enter. I only caught yellow jackets--my primary target pest category in this case--and all in the dehydration side. They were all dead already, so I simply opened up the traps and photographed the abdomens to see if I could determine their species. The traps come in a package that includes illustrations of all the possible target pests' abdomens so you can identify what you've caught. (The same illustrations are here.)
Next time I'm going to use this key which is much more thorough.







So it looks to me like these three are all the same species, probably the aerial yellow jacket Dolichovespula arenaria . The one on the glueboard is maybe the eastern yellow jacket Vespula maculifrons. I'll have to key them out more carefully in the future.


Yellow sac spiders also seem to be attracted to the WHY traps. I don't know if they just know that these are good places to catch insects (one of the lures is white vinegar, which catches lots of small flies) or if they are actually attracted to the lures. Most of the traps included resident spiders.




So if I DID do a podcast, what would I call it? I'm trying to get away from the Urban Pantheist title for new projects, since it doesn't really reflect what I do any more. I don't want there to be a spiritual sound to the title. My first thought was "The Human-Nature-Interface" but now I think that's stupid, also it's already in use in a few places. A friend suggested "Us and Them" (meaning humans and other living things) but that implies an adversarial relationship to me. Then I thought "Symbiosis," but that's an obsolete term and I think it also suggests something vaguely spiritual.

Comments

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

Maybe use the word "commensal" in the title, rather than "symbiosis"? A little more accurate and not over used, plus you could do some alliteration with it.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks, yeah, that's the word I mean. Too bad it sucks so much compared to "symbiosis," right? Why did they take that away from us?

[m0053.livejournal.com]

Something catchy like car talk? What's bugging me? I personally love corny podcast jokes like that. ^_^