Death To The Queen

I heard there was some sort of coronation on the other side of the pond this past weekend.  I don't pay much attention to other country's royalty as there's enough to handle here with the drama queens that inhabit my own country's political circles.  So I restrict my dealings with queens with this.

A wasp trap designed to attract, trap and drown the queen of yellow-jacket wasp kingdom. 

Unlike honeybees (Apis mellifera), who over-winter as an entire colony containing thousands of individual bees, yellow jacket wasps do not over-winter in a colony.  It is only the mated yellow jacket queen who survives to establish a new colony of these nasty insects.  The queen hibernates in a protected location to emerge in the spring to start a new nest site.

Yellow jacket wasps are bastards.  This is why their taxonomy is Vespula vulgaris. 

As the spring temperatures warm-up enough for the queen to emerge from her long winter slumber trapping and slaying the yellow jacket queen is an exceedingly efficient means of putting the hurt on the bastard wasp population around your home.  For every queen trapped and killed in the spring there will be one to five thousand fewer bastard yellow jackets during the summer and into the fall.  

Lest there be no misunderstanding – I hate yellow jacket wasps.  They will sting you for absolutely no reason.

They are the sociopaths of the insect world.

Death to the queen.