To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] No Yellow Jackets???
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:08:59 -0500
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