The early fall season is a fine time of year.
The weather is typically still warm, the kids are back in school, and in the sporting world the stretch run to the baseball postseason is getting very interesting if your team happens to be in the mix. Not to mention the leaves changing, autumn golf and the NHL season is right around the corner. Lots of positives to be had.
But the arrival of September also marks the return of a particularly irritating insect that everyone here in midwestern Ontario is familiar with. This of course would be the yellowjacket. Predatory wasp. I just know it as the common dump bee.
I can’t take full credit for the handle. Anyone who is a fan of the glory days of the Trailer Park Boys no doubt recall Ricky referring to them after his father, Ray, is kicked out of Sunnyvale and is forced to live at the dump. Occasionally while visiting him at the local landfill, Ricky and Bubbles are swarmed by the creatures and hilarity ensues.
Yellowjackets are not in fact bees, but a predatory wasp as I mentioned above, and they actually do have a purpose. They apparently are excellent pest controllers in terms of agriculture, eating up crop-destroying creatures like tent caterpillars and aphids. They also do have some inadvertent pollinating abilities, but are not as proficient at the task as say a honeybee, which are vital in a myriad of ways for humans.
Benefit or not, come late September when their regular food supplies are dwindling, the yellowjacket resorts to scavenging on ripening fruits and garbage. Hence the dump bee identifier. Outdoor meals are rarely dump bee-free this time of year, and the longer the food is on the table, the more come for a visit.
Dump bees also like to frequent parks and the open trash receptacles found in them, and this is where I had my latest encounter with one of these little buggers – pun intended. Nicole and I took the kids to Memorial Park the other weekend, and we were simply sitting on a bench chatting with a friend when I got tagged on the forearm. I hadn’t done anything to provoke it, I didn’t even know it was there. Yet for whatever reason it decided to sting me, and man it did not tickle.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been stung over the years. The first was when I was 10 or so – a bee got me near my eye and it swelled shut for a couple days, I don’t recall it even hurting that much. The next was in high school courtesy of our friend the yellowjacket – it got inside my shirt and got me a couple times on the shoulder before I managed to crush it.
A few years ago I was playing a round of solo golf when I got too close to an in-ground hornet burrow, and one nailed me right in the shin. That was painful. But this most recent sting took the title; even now as I write this a solid four days after the fact, I can still feel it in my arm a bit. Perhaps it left its stinger in there as a parting gift. Bugger.
I am not a hunter by any means and I don’t like to kill any living thing unless forced to. Be that as it may, I have zero mercy for yellowjackets. My weapon of choice is my hat, which I am rarely without. And if one ‘buzzes the tower’ to use a vintage Top Gun reference (first time for everything), it’s getting a vicious backhanded swat no matter the consequences. If it’s a fatal backhand, all the better.
We’ve now entered that point of the yellowjacket season where they’re on the rapid decline. They’re becoming less frequent and much dopier as the days gradually grow shorter and cooler. So return to the outdoor dining table and your park of choice without fear, my friends, for the dump bee’s time is short. But you can hedge your bets they’ll be back next September like clockwork – same dump bee time, same dump bee channel.
And I’ll be ready and waiting, hat in hand.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
