Among the most serious riding I've evah done was with a friend on her horses, she has a bad habit of wanting to short cut and bushwhack off trail up the sides of mountains.

After a short cut , we came down the slope onto an old logging road. We stopped at the edge for a rest. Her horse backed up a few steps and put his draft horse extra large 9 shoe right on top of a Yellow jacket nest in the ground. We didn't know it at first. They boiled out of the hole as soon as he lifted his hoof a little , and stung him on the back leg. The look on his face was priceless. He raised his big neck and stamped hard with that leg from the sting. Of course, he stomped right through the ground surface and down inches into the nest further.

When we realized the mayhem , we took off dead run. Being moderately allergic to hornets, I stuck to my saddle like superglue. The horse I was on, was new to me, and I just hope she wouldn't buck as she ran. She didn't. But my friend's draft was bucking high, wide and mighty every leap he took , lol . My friend rode that out.

The swarm followed us for some yards before they stopped.

It reminded me of Trapstickman's cartoon of him running in the hornet swarm, lol.

Hate it when that happens ....

I have no love for the Bald Face hornets.

Rootok Island had more voles than I ever saw any where. We never saw any sign that the inbred fox were feeding on them. We caught them by hand and in minnow traps making trail sets. There was vole trails everywhere. We put out different baits and they never ate any of it. Peanuts, and chips they had no interest in. It seems like they were red backs. I was on about 25 different islands and it was the only island I saw them on.

Spring conditions also are need for a colony to build up with the queen doing all the work for 2 weeks till the first 8-12 are produced.
Hot and dry is good aphid production = food source the the queens foraging
Rain knocks the aphids down and less hunting time for her.

Gulo dont forget the shrew population as they probably consume more, we found that snap traps were not the most effective catch for shrews ( sorex and micro sorex), but we had some special traps made in England with a trip wire that shrews set off catch ratios went up 10 fold.

Leaf duff and how it freezes down in the fall also effect overwintering queens. Wet leave=frost fast= few get through

Most the southern climate( below 52 parr) is now infested with a european wasp that is mistaken and those colonies over-winter in peoples home= 500 workers to start the season. this invasion has happened over the last 20 years

I've always thought that the large paper nests are from "Paper Wasps" and Yellow Jackets nest in the ground.


The idea of getting stung always kept me away and thus getting a closer look at the bugs.
now I'm going to have to just for my own curiosity.

Always nice to learn one more thing about the natural world that we live in.

X 1000

I never knew how many different varieties of yellow jackets there are. Here we find them in the ground mostly, but often in paper nests on trees. I have found, the hard way, one hornet nest in the ground. Most of them in the trees. Late summer and early fall, the yellow jackets always seem whizzed off. Growing up, if we found a hornet, yellow jacket, or wasp nest, we suffered knocking them down to get the larva for fish bait. I would about have a tooth pulled than be stung by a bald faced hornet. There is a guy on youtube with good videos digging up nest with shop vacs. Of course he has a suit on. Great post Gulo.

Down here in Texas we have southern yellowjackets. They live in the ground mostly or in some sort of cavity.

Hornets build in the trees in those paper "ball" nests


Gulo that is good work, figuring out the cause/effect relationship between those 2

What a horrible experience

...until later

Awesome post Gulo

I don’t know much about yellow jackets and hornets. I do know that voles survive floods quite well. First spring in Alaska and lower Nowitna flooded for miles on each side of the river. Thought sure the voles were all dead. Not even. Caught loads of marten the next winter near the mouth!