Aerial yellow jacket nest takes over a birdhouse

Ryles Richards discovered an unusual yellow jacket nest: aerial yellow jackets had built their nest around a bird house. On August 2, 2019, Ryles brought back this nest, pictured below, from a customer’s house in Groveland.  We don’t often see aerial yellow jackets; most of ours are ground-dwelling. But this was extra special, being they used a birdhouse as a nesting platform, and managed to almost entirely encase it.

The customer did not want the birdhouse back, so we added it our collection of oddities.

Ryles Richards with the birdhouse yellow jacket nest/ Photo by Heather Nordstrom.

You can see the bird house inside the enveloping paper nest. Photo by Heather Nordstrom.

The birdhouse yellow jacket nest. Photo by Heather Nordstrom.

Backside view of the birdhouse, showing the backside of the yellow jacket nest.

Sideways view. The left side is the back of the birdhouse, and yellow jacket nest.

Looking up into the nest. The nest appears to have started on the eave of the birdhouse.