Yellow Jackets

Before we left for the southland, I cut the lawn around the cabin up in the Adirondacks. During that process, I discovered two yellow jacket nests. I have found and destroyed two others in the lawn over the past. The presence of apple trees in the area provide lots of food from rotting apples this time of year.

Yellow jackets are small hornets, not really bees, but they can sting and often do. I hate the little B#ST@&DS. They also scare me.

When I was a toddler, I stepped on a honey bee in the yard and got stung. No surprise there, I supose. Nothing happened. A year or so later I did it again. This time I nearly died. Mom called the doctor who came running to the house. I lapsed into anaphylactic shock. No sooner did the doctor clear the front door than he had a needle in me. THEN he checked me over. He told my mom that I had been less than a minute from dying. From then on I gave all kinds of bees and wasps a lot of space.

I managed to stay away from them and they from me until one day when I was around 12. Some friends and I were throwing rocks at an old wooden fence. We didn't know there was a nest on the other side, we just liked the "thunk" it made when we struck it. We were some 20 feet from the fence and were suddenly under attack...or at least I was. I don't remember if the other two guys got stung but I got it five or six times. We all ran. Mom again hustled me off to the doctor who, after giving me a shot to stop the anaphylactic shock that was fast approaching, recommended I get a series of shots to desensitize me to the bee venom. I started gettin one shot a week of very diluted venom. Each month the strength was boosted. Then I got one shot every two weeks of much stronger stuff, then one shot a month. It took three years but the doctor said I was now save around bees, "but don't get careless!"

Many years later, in the late '70s, I opted to get shots for other allergies; pollen, insect bites, etc. I got six series of shots in much the same way as I had gotten the shots for bee stings. (I would have gotten ones for dog and cat, too, but they were not available at the time.)

I now breath much more easily and my eyes aren't bloodshot and itchy from March to November. I also don't swell up like the Pillsbury Dough Boy after being in the woods or out in a marshy area and eaten upon by mosquitoes. And over the counter drugs stay on the shelf. In general, I get to enjoy the outdoors a great deal more than I would have.

After staying away from bees for many years, I managed to step in a yellow jackets nest. (That's one of the problems with the little buggers. They build their hives in the ground and stepping on one, or even near one, can be like stepping on an anti-personnel mine.) I was doing some trapping of white-footed deer mice in the strip of woods along the median of I-78 for the research portion of my Masters degree. I had just finished picking up the last trap when I felt a sting above my socks and beneath my pant legs, then another and another. (It was early in the day, okay, and I wasn't fully alert to what was happening.) Then I dropped the traps and hauled a@@ out of the woods. When I cleared the woods, I saw a State Trooper's car parked behind mine. I walked over and introduced myself. I explained that I had just been stung 10 or 15 times, that it was the first time I had been stung since completing my shots many years ago, and asked if he would mind if we jsut sat and talked for awhile. I asked that he stay "just in case" and that if there was a problem he take me to Lyons or Morristown hospital if I needed medical help. He agreed to sit with me and we chatted about my research project for a quarter of an hour or so. When nothing seemed to be happening, we parted ways. I drove to a friends house (in which I now live--but that's another story) near Morristown hospital and we shared some ice tea and chatted for an hour. I had no reaction to the stings. Even the small bumps that appeared right after they happened disappeared while we sat and talked. Desentitization shots work and are well worth the time, money and shots.

Back to the nests in NY. I managed to damage them and burn the little buggers out. I thought I had gotten them all but when we got back I learned one nest had simply moved. I'll have to take care of them when I go back up in October. The other nest must have had some activity but a critter dug them out and ate them up. Good. Whish I knew what had done it. I have a fox in the area, but I don't know if they would dig up a nest. Skinks are another matter but I haven't seen (or scented) any. Bears too would dig up the next but this was too neatly done.