North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

We had no fruit due to late freeze last year plus terrible drought, and only 
saw 3 yellow jackets the whole summer, but this year they are making up for 
it.  The thing is that if there's no competition, a single hive will make 
more queens for the next year, so bottlenecks in the population are 
generally shortlived.  We had only a very few wasps survive the freeze last 
year, but those few nests had huge numbers of young queens by the end of the 
summer.  Sometimes it's just the luck of the draw.  Hal may just have had 
some skunks move into his neighborhood this year.    Donna