Now I have your attention!
They’re big and they’re scary, but are they dangerous? When I first heard of this bee quite a few years ago, a was extremely worried. Killer bees? In our neighborhood? Time to kiss my childhood goodbye and curl up inside for the rest of the summer…
A couple weeks ago, I went to help D with a project and I almost stepped on a huge bug in the grass. It was a newly molted cicada that we made friends with the previous day. He was discolored and had a white belly. I said to D, “Oh no, it looks like one of those killer bees got him.” Of course, D gave me crap for thinking that giant killer bees live in Iowa and we started talking about something else. All of a sudden something went buzzing past my face. And what do you think it was? “Hey. Hey! Look who just showed up. You know those “killer bees” I was just telling you about? Well there’s one right there.”
D freaked out and told me to get some shoes on and take Gunner inside. So what’s the deal with these bees? I went on an information hunt to find out!
Name: Sphecius speciosus
Nickname: Eastern Cicada killer (and they’re actually a wasp, not a bee)
Size: They look almost like a hummingbird when you first notice notice it. The North Carolina Extension at Forsyth County has an excellent photo comparing the sizes of a cicada killer, paper wasp, and yellow jacket. They are around two inches long. As you can see, they are really are quite large!
Lifestyle and Lifecycle: The females make their nests in the ground under sparse vegetation or bare spots in the sun. They fly close to the ground trying to find cicadas. So you should be wearing shoes outside. The males live for only two weeks while the females live for four weeks. They are most active for two weeks between July and September. The cicada-killer season is over in Iowa since it’s been getting cooler.
Do they kill? The adults don’t. The females sting the cicada which paralyzes it. She then drags the “food” back to her nest where the babies finish it off. (So they don’t kill people.)
Do they hurt people? No, if you’re not allergic and not unless you go out of your way to make the females mad. The males are very aggressive and may dive-bomb you, but they can NOT sting you. It takes a lot to get the females mad (getting tangled in clothing, touching or swatting her) but she can sting. I learned that a stinger is actually a modified female organ of some kind… weird, huh?
How bad is the sting? I can’t say because I haven’t gotten stung from one of these. But, I have read that on a scale of 1 to 4, with normal bee stings at a 2, cicada killer’s sting is a 1, in the same category as a sweat bee.
They’re everywhere! What do I do? What you don’t want to do is waste your time and money using “bombs,” yard sprays, or hiring a professional. These methods just don’t work with these wasps. Your choices are: 1) Kill by squashing/baseball bat/tennis racket them, 2) Go after each one and spray individually, 3) Flood the burrows (nests), or 4) Grow taller denser vegetation so the wasps don’t have the urge to nest in the bare spots of your yard. It’s recommended that you don’t kill them unless you have a bad infestation and it’s affecting your life.
100 female cicada-killers can wipe out 16,000 cicadas during one season. Cicadas lay their eggs under tree bark leaving the larvae to survive on tree roots until the following spring. So, try to let the wasps do what nature intended them to do.
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