SUMMERVILLE, S.C., Nov. 7 (UPI) -- A South Carolina man who makes a living extracting bees from trees, cars and houses says he recently removed what he thinks is the largest yellow jacket hive in the entire country.
"I had to go inside and pull all the paper, all the hive and all the brood," Eric "Critter" McCool, owner and operator of McCool's Wildlife Control & Bee Extractions, told local ABC affiliate WCIV. "It was pretty insane and quite the adrenaline rush."
When Robert McDougal, who found a camper buzzing with insects in his storage yard, first recruited McCool to come check out the yellow jackets, McCool didn't think much of it. He's been doing this for 19 years.
But when McCool poked his head into the pop-up camper -- decked out in his protective bee suit, of course -- he was astounded to find one of the largest nests he's ever seen, maybe the largest in the country, he said. McCool estimated that more than 400,000 yellow jackets were swarming about the 70 square-foot camper.
"The possibility of killing this nest with pesticides was virtually impossible -- it was too big," said McCool. Not only did the nest fill almost the entire camper, it hosted 37 queens. McCool extracted them by hand.
The nest was so big, McCool's colleagues suggested he just burn it out and be done with it. But he decided to get in there and do it the old-fashioned way -- vacuuming up the yellow jackets and ripping apart the nest.
"I was virtually inside the nest," McCool told the Post and Courier. "It was very hot, stuffy. It was like crawling through a bunch of cushions, and you could feel them buzzing against the bee suit."
The captured bees were released after the extraction process was over, but McCool said most of them will likely die off in the cold without a nest and a queen to follow.
Yellow jackets, part of the wasp family, are similar in size to a traditional honey bee but are typically more aggressive than bees, and they can use their stinger more than once. Their sting can be quite painful. Though sometimes feared by humans, yellow jackets are important pest predators, killing garden nuisances like caterpillars and weevils.
