Something happened this afternoon that I am still “having big feelings over” as the kids say. No pics from today, the image is from April, when I saw a yellow jacket struggling on a chilly evening, the first YJ of the year. That’s her in the photo below. I brought her inside and let her hang out overnight in a vented jar, then released her the following morning. After looking at the photos I took of her, I realized she was a young queen. When I posted about it on Facebook, some friends kvetched about me releasing a YJ queen when I should have smashed her. But I felt only that she was a living thing who needed some help. YJs are more important to their ecosystem than humans are, so sit with that truth for a while, why don’t you.

Fast forward to this afternoon…

I was deep in edits in the home office when I became aware of a buzzing around me. I thought at first it was a fly. On a nice day like this, I leave the back door open and flies occasionally come in, though Tyche dispatches them quickly. Without looking up from my screen I realized the buzzing was not fly-like. I thought maybe a bumblebee got in and wanted to make sure it got out safely before Tyche, who was napping, went for it.

I looked up and saw it was a yellow jacket. It was loud, way louder than they usually are, and I realized that was because it was big. She paused on the wall right above my laptop and I got a good look at her. It was a queen, which is weird, because as far as I know YJ queens don’t leave their nest after they establish it. I got up to open the window screen and she flew in lazy figure 8s around my head, just a couple inches away, for a few seconds, sat on the windowsill briefly, and then flew out the open window.

My thought, at the time, was, “Wow, that was the biggest yellow jacket I’ve seen since…” and only then did I remember the young queen who overnighted in my kitchen back in April.

It may have been her. It may have been her daughter. It may have been a completely random yellow jacket queen who decided to enter my house through the open back door, pass through the kitchen and then make a series of turns to find herself in my home office.

But something about her behavior, the lack of aggression, the figure 8s (something honey bees do as part of their communication), made me believe it was her. The life cycle of yellow jacket queens ends in autumn, after they have laid the egg that will overwinter and become the queen for the next year. There is no reason, as far as I know and as far as Google tells me, a mature queen would be out of her nest this time of year. But there she was.

I feel like she was saying goodbye, and maybe thank you for not smooshing me or letting me freeze to death back in April. Whether it was her or not, I hope she had a good life, and that no human gassed her nest or set it on fire or smothered it in a garbage bag. Be well, my queen, and be at peace.