The New Hotness

Although I’d sealed the cracks around the front door after the previous Yellowjacket encounter, a cloud of Yellowjackets revealed their queen had set up housekeeping between two plants in front of our house. I donned my beekeeper suit, sprayed the obvious entrances with wasp killer, then repeated the dose over the next several days until, as Khruschev apparently didn’t say, the survivors envied the dead.

The nest was about a foot in diameter, with the top slightly above ground level and bonded into the leaf / mulch layer:

It had two active layers below the top (positioned upside-down here):

The bottom view gives a better idea of its extent:

I know nothing of wasp nest building, but if they’re similar to honeybees, then the much larger cells in the disk were intended to raise overwintering queens to start new nests next spring:

The longer capped cells sticking out beyond the others may raise the few drones required to mate with queens from other nests:

That’s a fly over on the left; the scavengers wasted no time getting in there for the (perhaps still poisonous) goodies.

My wasp identification skillz are weak, but this looks like an American Yellowjacket:

The definitive test requires going face-to-face with a wasp to find the three dots on a German Yellowjacket.

However, all yellowjackets wear yellow-and-black livery and that’s enough ID for me!