The Big Problem Every Summer at the University of Illinois Campus - The Foraging Yellow Jacket

Well, late summer in my years as a student of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus was exciting to meet people of different kinds and different cultures.

But within all of the midst of people, one insect I witnessed as a very annonying pest was attempting to ruin it for me as well as everybody else....I am talking about the foraging yellow jacket.

And they were plentiful. I had never been a beekeeper, but I have researched and found that when queen yellow jackets lay a lot of eggs for their offspring to hatch in mid-summer, the result can be millions of yellow jackets in late summer. As spring comes, these stinging critters first stalk their prey--grass--to find dead insectes to eat, and of course, they target most flowers for their nectar and pollen.

However, when the food supply for them runs out in the late summer, they get even more voracious. The workers are kicked out of their original hives and as a result, they have no choice but to "forage" for food. I saw plenty of foraging yellow jackets (workers) outside near the Illini Union, most of them hovering over open garbage cans that had exposed waste and food. Why? They are honing for discarded food to eat - and to make it worse, the foul odors in the cans also attract these black-and-yellow flyers.

I had witnessed a lot of college students who got near those garbage cans being targets for these jackets. Just like mosquitos will target people for their blood, yellow jackets target people who have virtually any type of exposed food. People holding Coca-cola or other caramel-laden sugary pop drinks are especially affected, and I saw some students jump crazily as the jackets harrssed them.