No One Wants To Wear This Yellowjacket

Ouch!

Nothing messes up a picnic or day at the playground faster than unwanted guests like yellowjackets. Once they find your food, drinks or trash, these black-and-yellow fliers will hang around all day hoping to grab a sweet-tasting? snack!

In fruit orchards, yellowjackets can be more than just pests. They can interfere with picking the ripe fruit. No one wants to work in the trees if they’re constantly getting stung. If an orchard worker accidentally bumps into a nest, hundreds of the insects might try to sting the worker to defend their nest. And a small number of people can get very sick if a bee, wasp or yellowjacket stings them.

Do YOU know the differences between honey bees and yellowjackets? Click here to find out!

With all this trouble, then why does ARS entomologist Peter Landolt in Wapato, Wash., want to ATTRACT yellowjackets along with their stinging cousins, wasps and hornets?

“If we can lure the yellowjackets into a trap, we can prevent them from hanging around picnics, orchards or other areas where we don’t want them,” Landolt says.

Sounds like a no-brainer. Why not just put some fruit juice in a trap and wait for the yellowjackets to show up?

It’s not that simple. Sweet foods like fruit would also attract honey bees. And orchard owners want honey bees around, because they pollinate the fruit trees.

Some yellowjackets like meat, but that rots too fast to make a good bait. Some chemicals attract the insects too. But until now, scientists didn’t have one that appealed to the five peskiest species of yellowjacket in the United States.

Landolt found a great chemical combination to attract his targets--by accident!

He was actually developing a lure to trap codling moths. When one of these moths is a young caterpillar, its goal is to be the worm in someone's apple!

--By Kathryn Barry Stelljes, Information Staff, Agricultural Research Service