Aggressive yellow jackets a nuisance in Tahoe
The ice cream shop at Camp Richardson is trying to keep the bees out. Photo/Susan Wood
By KPIX-TV
It’s been a beautiful summer at Lake Tahoe, but the buzz is that vacationers aren’t the only ones enjoying the water.
Yellow jackets are all over the place.
They’re aggressive, fast and much more active than they were last year.
“Really, it’s a bad year, I mean everyone is closing their patio dining,” said Angella Falco with Placer County Vector Control.
From Angora Ridge north along the west shore to Tahoma is the worst areas effected in the El Dorado County portion of the basin. I live on Bijou Meadow and they are hardly noticeable.
Why is it so bad this year and why are certain spots more effected than others?
Looking back on spring we really had no hard freezes to speak of as the season segued into summer. Yellow jacket queens that emerge in the spring and start brand new nests every season usually have close to 1/3 of their population knocked down by one or multiple hard spring freezes. Didn’t happen this year. Add to that every stream zone for the first time in four years was filled with water. So an environment that was dry and easy to use rodent burrows as ground nests in the past didn’t happen in those stream zones this year. They had to move to higher ground. I’ve even been told by people on boats a 1/4 mile out on the lake on the west shore are getting descended upon when they break food out on board.