Gigantic Yellow Jacket Hives Plague Alabama

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Even as hordes of jelly fishes haunt beaches in the Mediterranean, now gigantic, huge wasp nests are appearing all over Alabama. If killer bees do this, too, we will all be doomed not that any creatures will weep for our demise.

I kill these guys all the time when working on houses.

By Garry Mitchell
The Associated Press

A yellow jacket nest engulfs the inside of a 1955 Chevrolet on Harry Coker's Tallassee property on Thursday. Gigantic yellow jacket nests have been found in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama.
-- Rob Carr

MOBILE -- To the bafflement of insect experts, gigantic yellow jacket nests have started turning up in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama.

Specialists say it could be the result of a mild winter and drought conditions, or multiple queens forcing worker yellow jackets to enlarge their quarters so the queens will be in separate areas. But experts haven't determined exactly what's behind the surprisingly large nests.

Auburn University entomologists, who say they've never seen the nests so large, have been fielding calls about the huge nests from property owners from Dothan up to Sylacauga and over into west-central Alabama's Black Belt.

At one site in Barbour County, the nest was as large as a Volkswagen Beetle, said Andy McLean, an Orkin pesticide service manager in Dothan who helped remove it from an abandoned barn about a month ago.

The photos are really amazing. I have killed yellow jackets nests that were pretty big in New Jersey. One filled an entire wall below a window, another was the size of a stripper's (non-Chinese funeral dancers) fake tits hanging in a tree. My bees can make a pretty good sized hive. Once, we found a ground wasp's hive next to the stone wall. We poured gasoline into it. We were rather drunk so we set it on fire. It was a big bonfire! Nearly set the whole pasture on fire. Had to run off to get some water to douse it. Don't try this at home.

Especially on a hive filling the inside of a 55 Chevvy. I once owned one. It was marvelous. Souped up the engine, being a teenager. I kept it clean so there were no wasp nests inside. Imagine being a hitchhiker and being picked up by a ghostly 55 Chevvy filled up with a wasp's nest. Sounds like a great horror flick! Maybe I could make some money!

'The Thing' was a giant ant movie they made in Death Valley when I was a kid.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Mon Aug 21, 6:11 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A tiny ant has the fastest jaw in the animal kingdom — literally quicker than the blink of an eye.

The trap-jaw ant's scientific name may be ponderous, Odontomachus bauri, but this hunter can clamp its mandibles shut at between 78 mph and 145 mph, according to a report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That makes it faster than the mantis shrimp, former record holder for fastest strike, according to researchers led by Sheila Patek, assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

So we have a 55 Chevvy being driven by a hive of ground hornets that picks up this ant colony that has super-snapping jaws. And then they turn on the radio in Kansas and it is wall to wall Rush Limbaugh. They decide to annihilate all humans. First, they must make contact with the cockroach kingdom in the cellar of a poorly run multi-family slum building in the Bronx....

Now I can't sleep.

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Comments

[Ouish]

That's one ugly nest. When I was twelve I had a fumigated wasps nest in my bedroom. It had been on a tree in the yard. It was made out of paper and was very elegantly designed and constucted. That thing in the car looks tumorous. And that disorderly, collapsing sheaf in back looks like a discarded mattress. Ugh. The builders obviously went way past the inherent limits of their building algorithms.

The giant ant movie is Them! The Thing is the giant radioactive carrot that crashes in a flying saucer and drinks blood. They're both surprisingly good movies. The Thing is a minor classic. Keep watching the skies!

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Ack! Right. Them is them! I was tired from work when writing all this. Thanks for the correction.

[JSmith]

"The giant ant movie is Them! The Thing is the giant radioactive carrot that crashes in a flying saucer and drinks blood."

I remember Them! Marshall Dillon was in it, only without his big hat. Wasn't there a scene where They devoured a bum - oops, homeless guy - in a concrete culvert or something?

I actually haven't seen as many yellowjackest and wasps this year as I have in others. Bees are around, but not so many of the others. Maybe they all moved to 'Bama.

"So we have a 55 Chevvy being driven by a hive of ground hornets that picks up this ant colony that has super-snapping jaws. And then they turn on the radio in Kansas and it is wall to wall Rush Limbaugh. They decide to annihilate all humans. First, they must make contact with the cockroach kingdom in the cellar of a poorly run multi-family slum building in the Bronx...."

...and after they meet the roaches they go to Brooklyn and hook up with the rats! (Remember "Willard"?)

[D.F. Facti]

Jesus, Elaine. Someone just came over to my table here at Chez Panera and wondered what I was laughing at. Can you work in some giant pods in file cabinets?

Oh, dear God. I'm going to have to go outside. This is too hilarious.