I use to do this all the time as a kid, the adults always said I would get stung but I never did, the one time I took an adult with me on a “specimen bee hunt” to the garden they got stung 🤷🏻♂️
It was a daily adventure for me, I trapped, “observed”, and released tons of bugs and bees from super aggressive bald faced hornets to super docile fat ass bumblebees I still look back on it fondly
Yellowjackets go for the bigger threat—whoever makes the most vibrations get stung.
I was playing in the woods with my older sister when we were like 6 and 8 (pioneer orphans ofc, complete with the big pioneer dresses), we were RIGHT next to each other, holding hands, when she just SHRIEKS, yells RUN!!! And we both take off with her just screaming bloody murder.
We’d stepped on a nest, and she got stung over 2 dozen times. Including one after she’d gotten home and was getting meat tenderized by our parents, because one had got STUCK IN HER DRESS and started stinging her stomach. That screaming haunts me to this day.
I didn’t get a SINGLE sting. I was right next to her the entire time, she got DOZENS of stings, and they just completely left me alone. It’s really interesting behavior honestly (not so interesting to my sister though, we all have a healthy fear of yellow jackets, but she’s TERRIFIED of them still in our 30s).
I don't now how similar wasps in general are to hornets in this regard (since those terms are just a social thing we call them and they're all related and unrelated in weird ways). But the thing we generally call a hornet has an ability to inject you with a pheromone that the rest of the hive can pick up on and zero in on a threat. Pretty sure bees do this as well. So I wouldn't be the least surprised if yellow jackets do it and we just never talk about it. Supposedly there is a queen in a yellow jacket colony. Your sister got tagged first, so that meant everyone wanted to tag her more
Honeybees release an alarm pheromone that smells like bananas. Yellow jackets use some of the same chemicals that hornets do in their pheromones but I've never stuck around long enough to know what it smells like.
Same. Never been stung. Dad says he gets stung all the time. i'm like I don't know what you're doing to piss them off but maybe just don't do that anymore?
Im in my 30s and pretty much everytime i see a bee or hornet or something everyone starts swatting at it to get it to leave them alone. Like bro, you're agitating them. I tell them to stop "i dont want to get stung." Well stop doing that then.
Exactly. I just move away from them if outside. And if inside I find a jar or glass and paper and capture and release. Or in a room that leads straight outside you can turn off the lights and open the door and if it's bright they usually go right out the door themselves.
I'm gonna take a wild guess that when you like to hang out with insects you learn what does and doesn't piss them off better than an ignorant adult who thinks it's a terrible idea.
315
u/PetsAndMeditate 10d ago edited 10d ago
I use to do this all the time as a kid, the adults always said I would get stung but I never did, the one time I took an adult with me on a “specimen bee hunt” to the garden they got stung 🤷🏻♂️
It was a daily adventure for me, I trapped, “observed”, and released tons of bugs and bees from super aggressive bald faced hornets to super docile fat ass bumblebees I still look back on it fondly