I think there's a honeybee colony on my driveway....

[applestar]

My daughter just got stung. They are buzzing around a group of old log stumps we have on our driveway. (We were JUST sitting on them last night watching the fireworks!) I think they must have moved in during the last week or so.

They are moving very fast (I think they got excited because a neighborhood child was driving around in his electric car) so it's hard to ID them, but they are smallish, not black, and I'm pretty sure they're not wasps or yellow jackets. If they ARE honeybees, I definitely don't want to kill them, it's just that they are in a bad location.

I just emailed a local beekeeper about it, but, boy, if I was a bit more confident about my ability to haul the log elsewhere in the garden -- maybe somewhere by the back fence...

[Jess]

Do you mean you want to keep it?

Have a word with the beekeeper when he/she turns up. I am sure for a small fee he/she would move it or would advise you as to why you shouldn't keep it. I can't think why you couldn't unless they are bad tempered bees. Perhaps you could take up beekeeping and harvest the honey yourself!....yum!

[applestar]

BOO HOO *I* just got stuuungg
Cured me of THAT fantasy in a hurry
I was trying to take a picture -- standing about 2 feet away. It got me mid-calf where people usually get tatoos (why oh why didn't I wear long jeans! ) -- hurt like heck! Yesterday, my daughter had been stung between her eye and bridge of her nose and was SCREAMING. She calmed down after I gave her an ice cube for it and started treating it. The little trooper (She has just a slight swelling but no pain this morning). I'm applying the same treatments to my leg and it's THROBBING! (As soon as she heard I got stung, SHE made me an ice bag for ME and ran to get the other remedies. When I thanked her, she said "You did it for me, and made me feel better. Now I do it for you!" )

I still think they're honeybees though after looking through all the on-line bee ID photos. A little on the aggressive side but not the Africanized (don't even know if they're in NJ) since the attacker bee was solitary in both cases. It's holiday weekend so I don't expect to hear back from the beekeeper until at least tomorrow.

[cheshirekat]

Good luck with your bee problem. I hope you and daughter remain sting-free while the bees are living in your yard.

I had Yellow-jacket wasps build a ground nest near the mailbox in my front yard last summer. I did manage to get a few photos of them without getting stung. I think it was just dumb luck because they are supposed to be very aggressive about their nests. But I have to say that surviving the entire summer without being stung helped me overcome my irrational fear of bees and wasps. If I even thought I heard or saw a bee, I'd go running and screaming away. Quite embarrassing. I was quite fascinated by them at first - the nerve to move into a location near a city sidewalk AND by the mailbox. It was a sickening fascination because my knees and legs were weak and shaky even while I stood over the nest to take photos. I imagined many times that my legs would give out and I'd end up falling onto the nest and die from multiple stings.

After a while, I just wanted them gone and didn't have the heart to call someone to move them - I don't think they are treated as kindly as bees and would probably be killed. So I just tried to go about my day just as they went about theirs. I hoped what I read about them being gone in the spring was true. When the snow melted from that corner of the yard, I walked by slowly every day to see if they were going to emerge from their nest and make me live through another summer of their presence. I finally got the nerve to walk all over the corner before convincing myself they were really gone before I began caring for that part of the yard again.

There are a lot of bees and wasps in my yard this year. I planted a lot of things the different pollinators like. I try to watch for heavy activity in case a new nest pops up but I live with them all around me when in my yard and am usually calm when there are a bunch of them buzzing about as I take photos or tend my plants. I can get within a few inches for a photo using the macro mode of my camera. Closer than that and I start to shake too much. They do seem to give a warning that I'm too close. I back off even though I'm never too sure if the sound is my fearful imagination or not.

[applestar]

Well, the beekeeper was here and said these are yellow jackets, and that they are impossible to re-locate. They are in a VERY bad area -- two steps from the sidewalk on my driveway (the kids use the logs to play on -- sometimes to climb on, sometimes as tables and chairs -- plus it's in a shade and makes a handy place for ME to sit while keeping an eye on them.) I wish I could be as tolerant as you Cheshirecat, but I believe I have no choice but to eliminate them.

My dilemma is that if I kill them now, I lose their caterpillar patrol/predation. It also seems SO ungrateful! But they ARE pretty aggressive and I can't have them attacking the neighborhood kids who use the sidewalk all the time (since our sidewalk leads to an access for a walking trail, playground, and athletic grounds), not to mention US!

So I guess they'll have to go. I've tossed several handfuls of DE at where they seems to be going into the log. Each time, they came out in a big swarm -- at least 20 or 30! While I watched far away. I've set out a home-made trap nearby.... and tonight.... I have a can of far-shooting mint-based wasp/hornet killer and I also plan to try to enclose the log in a double-layer of trashbags after spraying the entrance area.

Wish me luck! And if you have ANY advice between now and then, send them my way!

[Jess]

Ouch! Poor you and your daughter.
So not bees, wasps!
Be careful applestar, they can sting more than once unlike a bee.
I have had to destroy nests before so don't feel too bad. I won't tell you how as it is probably against every health and safety issue out there.
One nest was in the doorway of my shed! I could not get in and out without destroying it. The other was on a pathway in the ground. Every time I was anywhere near it they stung me. I now react quite badly to the stings so be CAREFUL. Being stung more than once in close succession can cause you to react more severely to the sting. Wear tight fitting clothes, tuck in and tie your hair back if it is long. If they get to your skin they will sting until you kill them.

[Toms92gp]

I had to get rid of a paper wasp nest that was on the rail of the steps to my porch. I couldn't leave it there. I'm all for keeping any bees, and most wasps. Yellow jakets and Hornets will eat up your fruits and veggies and some hornets also pray on bees. I've pretty much hated yellow jackets since I was about 10 years old and stepped on a nest and got stung well over 100 times. However in a way I'm gratefull I did, because now stings don't bother me, It hurts for about 2 min and then the most it bothers me again is maybe a little icthing the next day if that.

[cheshirekat]

Toms, you are gonna have to move closer to Denver, so I can call you up and you can take the wasp stings for me.

I think it's a great plan to put you in between me and the wasps.

[hendi_alex]

Found a yellow jacket nest this week-end, or rather they found me. Was breaking apart on old stump in my daughter's yard. I usually like to let such things naturally decay, because they make a great habitat for so many critters. A dead decaying tree is like a mini ecosytem. This stump just happens to be in a really inconvient location.

But anyway, turns out this stump is inhabited among other things, by some yellow jackets or ground wasps as some call them. One nailed me on the leg and before I realized what was happening, another got me on the arm. My wife heard me making a commotion so came to check me out. As we walked back to the house, one of those fiesty wasps followed about 50 feet and stung me a third time on the chest just at the top of my t-shirt neck. Needless to say, they are going to have to go. I tolerate wasps and their nests when they are clearly visible and are not likely to be inadvertently disturbed by someone. But the yellow jackets are simply too aggessvie and it is too easy for someone to accidentally disturb the nest. IMO their sting is quite a bit worse than that of most other wasps as well.

Ouch!

[Kisal]

The beekeeper that educated me about yellow jackets, when I thought I had a bee swarm under my house, referred to them as "those nasty little meat eaters." He said they are much more poisonous than the larger yellow jackets, or any other kind of bee or wasp. Apparently, in the spring/early summer, they feed on nectar, but in late summer and fall, they feed on decaying meat and animal feces.