Thursday, the wildfire smoke cleared enough that I sat outside and watched the lake. But, soon my attention was distracted by some wasps that began to pay attention to my aged deck furniture. What were they doing?
I had seen the activity a decade before, but with a different type of wasp. Then it was the European Paper Wasp; this time it was the Western Yellowjacket (Vespula pensylvanica). I am sure multiple wasps are active on my furniture each year, but I fail to notice.
They were collecting wood, which when mixed with their saliva, is the pulp that makes their hive. The temporary problem I had was that the Western Yellowjacket usually doesn’t make a hive, but makes a nest in cavities in the ground. However, a nest is made of more than the outer hive covering; it also contains the hexagonal cylinders which hold the eggs. It is for the building of these that the yellowjacket was collecting wood pulp.
I note that these wasps have a particularly painful sting. However, I was not near their defended nest, and I avoided close contact.
A Western Yellowjacket collects wood pulp to build the enclosures for the queen’s eggs.
This was being collected by workers: unreproductive females. The wood loss is trivial.
The yellowjacket flies off with some pulp.
No pulp fiction here. Excellent photos. What camera Or phone did you use?
What we call “hornets” in Alaska’s interior do the same. That’s why those silver “miracle balls” are silver gray. I call them miracle balls because what lives in them eat the aphids in the garden. I first noticed this behavior years ago on a pallet fence surrounding the garden, brown streaks on gray pallet boards, as in your photos. Clever.
Robert, the camera was not a phone. A phone would have placed me too close to some potentially painful wasps. Rather it was a standard camera with a rather long lens. From the many pictures taken, I chose three that helped tell the story.
Fascinating! I particularly like seeing the close-up collection by the front-facing wasp.