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| Yellowjacket Nest, Golden Gate Park |
On today's morning walk, which took me down Ortega Street to the beach, I passed a yellow pick-up truck with a "BMAN" license plate and a small honeybee sticker on its side. I should have taken a snapshot of it [UPDATE: see below], because Bs were a little bit of a theme today, since I also picked up B&B (bagels and bananas) at the Safeway on Noriega Street on my return trip....
And then as I was biking through Golden Gate Park I thought I'd spotted a bee's nest, only to stand corrected: a wasp is not a bee, and yellowjackets are wasps. Their papery nests are admirable constructions, like this one maybe twenty feet off the ground in some tree branches (poss. Norfolk Island Pine, Araucaria heterophylla) along MLK Jr. Drive. Unlike bees, yellowjackets can sting more than once, as I learned long ago when as a kid I got stung in the lip, twice, when I stuck my head in some bushes to get a better look at one of their nests.
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| The other side of the nest, with workers putting on some finishing touches. |
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Perils of the Park
(The sprinkler was going when I rode by today, 7/9, and was coming very close to wiping out the wasp nest.) |
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View With Entrance Hole
(Here's the post-sprinkler nest on 7/10, with some bees going in and out at the nearly dead-center entrance hole.) |
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| Vine Branches on Retaining Wall, Ortega Street |
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| Monkey Flower and Chert Outcrop, 14th Avenue |
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| The Bee Man's Truck |
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