Kim

It is unlikely the spruce tree attracts the hornets except in the most general sense of their apparently having a nest nearby. Cutting the tree down, if it is in good shape, would be a most unwarranted action. And that's my opinion!

+oM

What sort of yellow jackets? How many, and who is putting them there?
{{gwi:459250}}

The yellow-jackets are attracted by the sugary drops of liquid excreted by aphids in the tree crown.

Yes, this is most likely the cause, I have seen them on my pine tree too, this doesn't mean a nest is near by, no worries, when cold sets in most will die.

Konrad

i choose to accept the "feeding" theory since it makes the most sense to me, but i would like to know for sure. there is no nest nearby -- i've looked. there are a couple dozen yellow jackets (at least) and they hover all around and on the fir/ spruce (it is a young tree, only 7 ft tall or so)...... they alight on some of the needles, appear to get something out of this action (feeding?), then fly off the branch, only to hover some more, "feed" some more and repeat these steps ad infinitum...... very strange, and i've never seen the like before. what's going on? why do they do it? i certainly don't see any pollen or sap, but it could be there in minute amounts. i'd like to understand this more fully.

They're all horticulture graduates that are trying to produce a yellow-and-blue color harmony in your garden.

If you find a nest it will say _________ College over the opening.

Either that or they are hunting for insects on the spruce foliage.

They are probably collecting small amounts of sap or resins that they use in constructing their nests (see link on "propolis"). They become more noticeable later in the year because the nests are larger with more workers.

Here is a link that might be useful: propolis

I want to plant two trees next to entry gates in SoCal High desert. I like those Christmas looking trees with bouncy branches and Blue point junipers. What would be best?
our weather is crazy, heat, winds, cool winters although snow every 4 years

I am so happy you posted this subject. My husband grew up on an apple orchard that has lots of pine trees on the property. He will not let me plant any kind of needle evergreen tree because he says they attract mosquitos.

Is he crazy or is there merit to his stubbornness?!

Pineresin, you may know this by now, but it bugged me that nobody replied to you that Yellowjackets are bees here in the US. If you knew this now please disregard.

Usually I see yellow jackets on the lower needles of an Abies amabilis, more so than other trees. It's located in my nursery area and gets supplemental water from watering plants in pots. It is susceptible to aphids in the rapidly growing crown. The lower branches have a light coating of soot mold from the sugary excrement from the aphids. That's where the Yellow Jackets seem to be and that's what they must be feeding on.
This year there seems to be almost no Yellow Jackets around my garden. I've seen one all summer! That's never happened before and I've been here since 1979. Usually I come across several nests by Fall, some by accident, but most by careful observing. Nothing worse than stumbling on one while engrossed in pruning.
The only Butterflies I've seen here this year are a few white Cabbage Butterflies. No Monarchs or Swallowtails. Nothing even eating my fennel or dill! Same for my one neighbor located a couple of hundred yards away. Weird. The other bugs seem to be doing just fine, judging by all the spider webs.
I'm sort of isolated in the woods, but not THAT isolated!
Mike

poaki1, yellow jackets are wasps, they are erroneously called bees by some people here in the US. But they are still wasps, not bees. Two different species.

They normally sting when they sense their nest is being attacked. I was stung twice when inadvertedly brushed the entrance to a nest under my backyard table. It's a mean sting and it itches for three days.

Eliminated the nest at night by pouring gasoline, not necessary to light it. And not necessary to pour a whole lot . I would say 1/4 to 1/3 of a can of coke. I have eliminated two nests this way already.

They fly around my Alberta Dwarf Spruces collecting something, food or sap I'm not sure. I've noticed yhey are not aggressive while doing this.

Yellow jackets change from protein seeking to sugar seeking in fall. My guess is also that something is producing honeydew in that tree, or that there is some sort of sweet fluid or sap. They were my bane when I had thousands of pots of mums right when they started the sugar search, if any mums had aphids I would end up in the ER from stings. Never had a bee allergy until then. Mikebotann......same story here with the butterflies and yellow jackets this year, and ditto Japanese beetles. Never saw a one of them. No aphids either. Eerily absent. I chalked it up to last year's winter from hell.

I had the same problem with some pines this fall. I found this nest on Maple tree.

Frank

starterdude: That looks like a white-faced hornet nest and not a yellowjacket nest. They are mean as well though!

Usually yellowjackets are not aggressive when just foraging for food. But yes, if you disturb them close to their nests, especially in late summer/early fall they will protect it.

I eliminated two yellow jacket nests this summer. One was in the ground near my shed and the other was in the house in a vent. Yikes! I used the 'Shop-Vac' method (look it up on You Tube). Worked quite well.

I have a lot of yellowjackets around my late-blooming hollies right now. I don't bother them and they don't bother me.

i leave them alone in summer...

and destroy them in winter ...

of course on 5 acres.. that is easy ... in suburbia.. i paid to have one near the door removed ... money well spent IMHO

ken

I have a fun and easy method:

When I spot the entrance hole, dead twigs and limbs are gathered from the woods and placed next to it. Just before dark, I carry a lawn chair, lighter, 2 beers, and a flashlight to the spot. When all the hornets have entered the hole, a small fire is built on top, which is kept going until the beers are gone. Cheap entertainment. The flashlight is to keep from stepping on a Copperhead on the way to the house.

Why not just go to Home Depot and purchase a can of Wasp spray and spray it all over the tree. Problem solved......

carbaryl power works better. A little pile of it by ground dwelling yellow jacket hole applied when they are not active in the evening, and they track the powder inside to the queen. Issue over and they do all the work. Yes, that looks like a bald-faced hornet nest. I have just one of them every year on our property. We have co-existed for years with this arrangment. I leave them to heck alone, and they leave me alone. Their sting is exquisitely painful and I repsect them more than any other wasp. I usually do not find out where the football nest is located until leaf drop in autumn, and sometime it's shocking how closely I've worked to it with power equipment. LOL. Once it was on a low-hanging branch directly over my vegetable garden, hidden by leaf canopy. Ran tillers under it. Never had an issue.

I blasted the hornets nest with a 12 ga. shotgun. It was too close to the kids play area on a very low branch.

Frank

I leave them alone for the most part. I do point where they're at so kids and my friends don't accidentally stumble into them.
I agree the sting is very painful, more so than a Yellow Jacket, but it doesn't seem to last as long.
Mike

Delta Dust is a good product if the nest is within reach. It just takes a while. Lots of info on it online.

In my case, I didn't want to wait for it to work on the nest in my house. That's why I used the Shop Vac method first, then once I had the nest cleaned out of the venting, I sprayed delta dust in there as a long term preventative.

Yellow jackets will often build their nests underground. Perhaps these wasps are living beneath the spruce tree, in the ground.

They can definitely build their nests underground. About this time maybe 3 years ago I was putting mulch down for the winter when all of a sudden I got stung by a yellow jacket on my elbow. It hurt like hell for a week and itched even longer. I swear it itched for almost 3 weeks.

We continually, like every single year for 11 years that we've lived here, have dealt with hornets nesting on our front covered porch. It affected us ALL the time because we would see them flying around every time we entered our exited the front door, which in the summer time is practically every few minutes.

Well this year we had finally had it. There was a huge nest on top of the covered porch, underneath the siding, and after 6 cans of hornet spray didn't work, we finally called the exterminator. Here's a picture of him at our house in his bee suit.

https://twitter.com/eastcoastmom91/status/505010792312606720

Anyway, he sprayed and sprayed while we watched from our upper bedroom window. He was being swarmed by angry hornets. They were all over his mask! I guess they were pretty pissed at him messing with their nest. I remember one hornet getting stuck in his mask, so that he had to grab it and pluck it out.

He left us with a still-swirling cloud of angry hornets, I was not happy, but he promised us that their numbers would dwindle down to nothing as the hornets would fly in and out of the nest getting the powder on them.

The only problem was they never dwindled down! 3 days later we had just as many hornets swarming around and I wouldn't let the kids outside because of it. The next door neighbor even called to make sure we were okay. Anyway, we called the exterminator back, and he climbed back up and took a look and saw that the nest was much further away and deep down than he thought, so he realized that he had never actually sprayed the nest.

He sprayed again like crazy and even refused to take any money for it since he said it was his fault for missing the nest.

So a few days later we still had about 10 hornets still flying around. It felt like we were never going to be rid of the hornets. I made an off the cuff comment to dh that I wished we didn't have the porch, that it was on the north side (front) of the house and it offered no shade, and that I hated that the living room wasn't more open.

I commented that having to deal with the hornets year after year was such BS. Dh shocked me by saying I'm taking it down this weekend, and he did!

It took him all weekend and he got hurt a few times, but dh, all by himself, (he's a suit and tie guy so this was a big deal for him) piece by piece took down our covered porch. The next door neighbor, who's a retired contractor, said dh did a great job. And guess what? Dh found over 50 nests inside the porch! Obviously most of them were from a long time ago, but there were 4 current nests.

Yes, hornets can still make nests around our house, but it won't be right at our front door. And the house looks awesome! No one around here has covered porches so the house kind of stood out. I love the feeling of not living in a "cave" anymore. I wish we'd done this 11 years ago.

This post was edited by ilovemytrees on Sun, Nov 2, 14 at 8:01

ilovemytrees - sounds like you may have been plagued by the German Yellowjacket (see link). Unlike most other wasps/yellowjackets, German YJ's often reuse their nests year after year, and the nests can become quite large.

Here is a link that might be useful: German Yellowjackets

The *faux* wasp/ hornets nests you can buy at the hardware store are great! These insects are territorial and won’t build a nest near another one. I had two wasp nests in my yard one summer but none after I hung one of these *faux nests in my front and back yard!

I have a real one I found in the woods. :-)