Halloween decorations are going up in my neighborhood. A few leaves have started to fall. I put on my light vest at night when I walk. Doesn't matter what the calendar says, or exactly where the sun hangs in the sky. It's fall, definitely fall.
While much of the life around me will go to sleep, will take a bit of rest before bursting forth again in spring, some life will cease. I came across one creature this morning who reminded me of that truth.
A yellow jacket had found its way between my window screen and window. I think it took advantage of the small hole my cat scratched out in the screen. Have to fix that soon. What I noticed about the yellowjacket was that it did not move. It had found a corner of the screen and wedged itself there. No amount of tapping visibly disturbed the bee.
I inched the window open and tried prying the screen up so the wasp (yellowjackets are wasps) could fly away. This insect showed no interest in leaving. It almost looked as though it was dead.
An aroused yellowjacket generally will assume an aggressive pose when threatened. This wasp remained still. I busied myself getting a sack of laundry together and when I returned to the window the wasp had moved. Was it sitting in the sun? That very much seemed to be the case.
Then it dawned on me. We had a really cold snap last night, cold for early October. The temperature dipped to 46 F. Was that too cold for the yellowjacket?
I looked it up...when is it too cold for a yellowjacket to live?
Several sources suggest that once the temperature falls below 50 F, the yellowjacket will become sluggish and will not fly.
I should stop here and define my terms a little more precisely. There are many kinds of wasps. It seems the term 'yellowjacket' is an American term, according to entomologist Albert Greene from the University of Maryland.
I tried to identify this particular type of wasp by doing a Google image search and came up with the eastern yellowjacket. Here's a photo of this insect from Wikipedia (used with CC 4.0 share and share alike: PeterWChen.)
My videos and photos were shot with my phone through the window pane. Although the wasp was quiet, yellowjackets can be quite dangerous, so I didn't want it to come in the house. Many species of wasp are solitary, but the yellowjacket is a social animal. Eastern yellowjackets generally nest in the ground, but can also nest in wall voids--which means I have to keep my eyes open and make sure this wasp is a stray and not one that has found a nest somewhere in my home.
After the yellowjacket had sat in the sun for a while, it started to move. I shot these videos over a period of maybe half an hour. Perhaps not that long.
The first sign of life I noticed was a sort of twitching. You can see that in the video below.
As time passed I noticed the twitching had extended from the wasp's head to its leg. See below:
I was fascinated. In the video below you can see one of the wings moving. I looked up the lifespan of the eastern yellowjacket. By the end of October, after the first freeze certainly, all members of the nest will be dead--except newly-fertilized young queens that will make homes in new nests. They, and their offspring, will be back to pester us in the spring.
In the video below you can see the wasp's torso beginning to vibrate. Yellowjackets are cold-blooded and therefor this insect needed to bask in the sun to get warm enough to function.
In the video below you can see the wasp beginning to coordinate its movements. It's actually looking almost active.
As dangerous as this insect is, and as much as I wanted it stay on the other side of the pane, I was cheering for this little fellow. It was really a pleasure to see the insect move and make progress along the bottom of the screen. You can see the little animal, wobbly, but definitely showing much more life in the video below.
I was busy. I had just changed my sheets (the window was in the bedroom) and I was collecting laundry from all over the place, so I left the wasp alone. Sometime later, maybe an hour, I checked back and the insect was gone. Isn't that a wonderful ending to the story?
Of course, that's not the end of the story. It's one day. That's all any of us have, today. Tomorrow is not guaranteed--we've heard that expression before. Not guaranteed for the wasp and not for us.
Tonight the temperature is supposed to fall down to 40 F. Will this wasp make it? Will the yellowjacket rise in the morning and struggle again to be warm, to live?
I hope so.
I'll end with the picture of a bumble bee I captured a week or two ago.
This bumble bee was supping on a bit of nectar. It stayed there for quite a while. I could see its mouth parts moving. It wasn't very chilly out at the time. I've read since that bumble bees become lethargic if the temperature hits fifty. They also operate with a biological clock. Most workers will die at the end of the season and only the queens will have hibernated to return in the spring.
Here is a short video. The bee doesn't seem to be moving at all here.
Thank you for reading my blog. Health and peace to all. Hive on!