I noticed a half dozen yellow jackets flying their methodical zigzag patrols under the beehive around the first of August. I also noticed that a bee that misses the landing platform and lands on the ground instead is swarmed by the yellow jackets and eaten.

As the yellow jacket numbers increase, I wonder if they pose a threat to the hive. Two weeks later, there are more yellow jackets, but a subtle shift in their behavior, an equilibrium of sorts. I see two live bees miss the landing and fall to the ground, but the yellow jackets simply ignore them.

Instead, I see a housekeeping bee fly down to the ground with a hefty dead drone body in tow and make a general fuss until a yellow jacket notices and grabs the bait, and the housekeeping bee lifts off back to the hive. Soon two other dead bees are dumped overboard and cleaned up by the jackets in short order.

Now the bees don't have to fly a distance away with their dead to clean their hive, they have a garbage clean up service on site that serves the double purpose of feeding the yellow jackets dead rather than live bees.