What's the buzz? Bees, wasps now thriving

Does early fall weather, with sunny skies and brisk air, sound perfect for an outdoor picnic?

Ask bees and wasps, and you'd get a resounding yes.

You could say it's the time of the season for buzzing.

"The past month has been really crazy," said Jared Frank, director of business operations for Ready Pest Control in Winnebago. "Since they're so aggressive now, they keep coming back."

Dr. Sydney Cameron, associate professor in the department of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says late summer and early fall present a key time in the life cycle of bees and wasps.

"What you're seeing at the end of the summer is this sort of 'new brood' phenomenon," Cameron said. Depending on the species, she said, the insects start producing new males in August.

After building their populations all summer, males and reproducing females take to the air trolling for each other -- and food sources for their young.

"They're both mating, looking for mates, and surviving," she said.

Experts say many people confuse yellowjackets with bees, but there are some obvious differences. Bees, with amber and brown stripes, have branched hairs they use to collect pollen. Yellowjacket wasps are hairless and black with yellow stripes.

"A lot of people call wasps bees," Frank said.

Either way, people will start noticing more numerous and aggressive bees and yellowjackets circling their picnics during the fall. As flowers and natural nectar sources dry up, humans present an irresistible attraction.

"A lot of times as people are spending more time outdoors ... (bees and wasps) become more attracted to the food we have," said senior biologist Mike Adam of the Lake County Health Department.

Dr. William Maloney, medical director of the emergency department at Condell Hospital, said people should take precautions, including covering soda cans to prevent getting stung.

"We see a fair amount of bees that crawl into pop cans," Maloney said. "It's shocking to be stung in the tongue."

Unfortunately, he said, there doesn't seem to be a test people can take to determine if they're allergic to bee and wasp stings, so be cautious with symptoms.

Maloney said normal reactions to a sting are localized pain and discomfort that can be treated with ice and an over-the-counter pain reliever.

But if the reaction appears to spread to other parts of the body, he said, seek immediate medical attention.

"If you get hives all over your body, that's concerning," he said. Other dangerous signs include trouble breathing, lightheadedness, chest pain and throat closure.

Even those who have already been stung and didn't have an allergic reaction should be on guard, Maloney said.

"Typically people have problems with successive stings," he said.

But bee-phobics won't have to wait long for relief. When cooler weather arrives, the males will die and breeding females will find places to "winter."

"They don't withstand … the cooler temperatures," said University of Illinois Extension educator John Church. "The yellowjackets, especially, get more sluggish."

But experts are quick to point out even the peskiest wasps and bees serve a critical ecological purpose.

"They're all pollinators, which helps us have crops," said Sharon Yiesla, a horticulturist at the University of Illinois Extension Service. "Sometimes they just get in our way and we get tangled up with them."