3:00 snapshot #1318: 95 between Dedham and Danvers

Tuesday I took the day off to go to the wedding of two zookeepers.

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Freedom of Information Post

My Father, my brother and my brother's kids are in Vancouver (the big city in Canada, not the island nor the city in Washington). I looked at my old posts from me and my dad's trip there, (to recommend stuff to my non-vacation-planning family) and discovered that I had friends-locked most of them. I think I was shy about posting vacation pics at that time, possibly because I'd just been put in the LJ Spotlight. Whatever; My vacation pics from the most urban naturey of urban places are totally relevant to anyone who is reading this now.

If you'd like to relive my vacation from 7 years ago, Please do: Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver.

In other news, the Canadian border authorities allowed my dad into Canada with an expired passport, the fun will come when they try to pass back into the United States!

"Good" wasps?

In a couple weeks I'm going to be giving a presentation on yellow jackets to our ZooTeens (teenagers hired to work at the zoo for the summer). My primary objective is to turn these young people into my eyes and ears and get early warning about yellow jacket situations before they are hopeless. My secondary objective is to educate them about insects in general and wasps in particular, and get across the idea that these animals are mostly positive actors in our ecosystem, and it's only when you introduce large amounts of human garbage that they become problematic. Perhaps I'm not being totally honest about my primary and secondary objectives.

I haven't decided how deep to get into the subject. I definitely want to describe the differences between solitary wasps, social wasps, and bees, but do I bring up ichneumons, like this beauty here? I think I probably will.

"Bad" wasps?

While attending a presentation on our beehives (see next post) I noticed this yellow jacket nest. Well, the first thing I noticed was yellow jacket workers flying into an old desk that was being stored outside for no good reason I could think of. I carefully slid a panel back and took the above picture. Yup, yellow jackets. Their round paper nests are pretty distinctive, and they love to build them in man made cavities, like in wall voids, ramshackle wooden sheds, and old desks that are stored outside for no good reason.

Whenever I see a new object like a utility box or playground equipment appear in my areas of stewardship, I examine it for openings which wasps will exploit to make nests within. (Also if they have gaps on the ground that lead to cavities that will encourage mice to enter, or open structures up high that house sparrows will use as platforms for nests.) This is a pretty small nest, with only one comb of paper cells. As the summer goes on, the wasps will add layers of combs, each cell serving as a nursing compartment for a new worker. Mature yellow jacket nests will have several thousand workers or more.

Yellow jackets are troublesome wasps because they like to nest near humans, ferociously defend their nests by stinging, and can sting multiple times each. They are attracted to human garbage--meat early in the season and then liquid sugar later in the season. Without humans they would feed their larvae insects and meat scavenged from carcasses, while the adults would make do with flower nectar and the juices of fallen fruit. In nature, they are pollinators, insect controllers, and cleaners of refuse. However, humans have obliged yellow jackets with a bounty of carrion (hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken fingers) and liquid sugar (soda, ice cream, and ketchup) exactly during the summer and autumn months when the wasps are looking for it. We have turned them from beneficial insects into pests (or monsters).

Yellow jacket venom (as well as the venom from other social wasps) is similar enough to the venom of honeybees that those who are allergic to one group have a 30-50 percent chance of being allergic to the other. Yellow jackets are more dangerous because each worker can sting multiple times, and they are far more likely to sting than any kind of bee, and most other wasps.


The queen is on the left, a bit bigger than a honeybee. A worker is on the right, much smaller than a honeybee.

3:00 snapshot #1319: Honeybee presentation

One of our zookeepers has taken on the task of maintaining the honeybee hives. She invited staff to come see inside the hives. (This was taken afterward.)

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One last cuddle

Just before Alexis took Reggie to his forever home we had a lay down together. It seems to be getting harder to let go of them. I'm hoping to spend some more quality time with my own geriatric dog for a while.