Does anyone know if yellow jackets avoid flying on hot day and will only come out at night?
Asked by
Pandora (
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July 10th, 2012
Saw hundreds of flying small yellow and black bugs that looked like yellow jackets last night while walking the dog. They were swarming the grassy areas and luckily they didn’t seem to bother with anyone, even my dog.
If they were yellow jackets, wouldn’t they have stung us?
Unfortuately I didn’t have my reading glasses on so I could not make out any fine details. Just the shape and the coloring.
If they are not yellow jackets, than what could they be. They were too skinny and small to be bumble bees. Of course I have never seen newly hatched bumble bees, so maybe they are smaller.
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7 Answers
I have seen yellow jackets only in the daytime. Hot weather does not bother them.
Opposite @Pandora. They prefer the heat and go to the nest at night.
If you saw many yellow & black bugs in a grassy location, I’m thinking they were sand wasps or some other small type of ground burrowing wasp. Most likely in the area to get into their burrow for the night.
@SpatzieLover I think you may have hit the nail on the head. I looked them up and found that they are generally not as agressive as other wasps. That is the one thing that puzzled me. They were all low to the ground and didn’t seem bother by my dog or myself or even other people walking by. The sun has baked the lawns for the last few days to temperatures well over 100 degrees and so the lawns are practically like sand now.
@marinelife That is what puzzled me as well. I’ve seen them fly in hot weather during the day. But I don’t know if 100 degrees is too hot. I know the bugs and birds have been laying low after 10 days of hot weather.
Yellow Jackets don;t sting, they bite. Perhaps it was a hatching of a new generation, or they were swarming at a water source, newly watered grass, sprinklers.
Everything needs water.
@ccrow Haha
I’m thinking of what we call in Ca. “meat bees”. I don’t know the scientific name for them. The ones that swarm your picnic and eat meat. lol
@Coloma They seem to be the same… and I seem to be one of the unfortunate souls they find particularly interesting. DH didn’t believe me at first, but he’s seen enough by now to realize I’m not imagining things, lol.
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