- [Coyote] The entire nest is under this ground structure.
Whoa, look at that!
(laughs)
(yellow jackets buzzing)
(screams)
(fast dramatic music)
You can see the swarm is pretty intense at this point.
Ouch!
I have a feeling
this is probably going to be a little painful.
I'm Coyote Peterson,
and I'm about to enter the angry yellow jacket box.
(screams)
You guys are gonna have to run
because these things are gonna be swarming everywhere.
(screams) (yellow jacket buzzing)
Bad idea! Bad idea!
(yellow jacket buzzing)
(gentle suspenseful music)
Here's a question for you.
Have you ever been swarmed by yellow jackets?
Yellow jackets build their nests
underneath the surface of the earth.
And if you stumble upon them,
especially in the fall,
they will swarm out and sting you multiple times.
Now one difficult thing,
is how do you ever know
where yellow jacket nest is going to be?
You don't, until now.
Let me show you this.
You see that little pink flag?
And that stake going down into the ground?
That is a massive yellow jacket nest.
And today,
we're going to figure out three different things
about these stinging insects.
Number one, can they sting through a bee suit?
We're going to do this as a test to figure out
whether or not just these little guys
can get through a bee suit,
before I try this against giant hornets.
Number two,
how far do you need to walk from
a swarming yellow jacket nest,
before they'll stop following you?
And number three, are they still angry,
even after they've been taken away from their nest,
put inside of a plastic box,
and then your hand goes inside the box?
I'm sure you're saying,
"Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Coyote, did you just say
box filled with yellow jackets
and your hand's going inside the box?"
Yeah, guys,
that is exactly what we're getting ourselves into today.
But first, we gotta test out the bee suit theory.
Let's get dressed up,
see what happens when we disturb
an entire nest of yellow jackets.
About a year back
we filmed an episode called the "Bullet Ant Box,"
which, essentially,
we have made an advanced version of today.
Now we're gonna catch the yellow jackets.
You see it's got this little slide trap door there.
The way that we're gonna catch 'em,
is I'm gonna go in without disturbing the nest,
place this right over the top,
and once the nest is disturbed,
dozens of them will fly up, and into, the box.
Whoa, look at that! (laughs)
Wow, okay, yeah,
we're definitely getting swarmed at this point.
So I think that's enough for the box itself.
Let me go ahead and close this up.
(yellow jackets buzzing)
(screams)
Yeah, that's an entire box of yellow jackets.
(yellow jackets buzzing loudly)
Okay. You can see the swarm is pretty intense at this point.
Oh! God.
Just got stuck on my hand, for sure.
Look at the GoPro.
The GoPro is completely swarmed.
Yellow jacket chaos.
We've got our box of yellow jackets.
Now we are just a few yards away from the nest.
Whoa. Ow. Ow. Man.
Definitely getting through the suit.
They're definitely getting through the suit.
Okay.
Ow.
All right, come on, let's walk back slowly this direction.
Whoo. Moving slowly.
You can see they're definitely still following.
Are you getting stung?
- I got one sting on the finger,
and it definitely is throbbing.
I got two stings on the legs so far.
They're still swarming around the GoPro.
All right.
We are about 40 yards away from the nest at this point,
while they're still super angry.
Ow! Go get stung in the back.
We're gonna go down this bridge up here.
Ah, ah.
We're now about 150 yards away from the nest,
and I do not see them
swarming around as much anymore, do you?
- No.
- Are they all around me?
- [Assistant] No, I don't see any
around you at all, actually.
- Whoo.
So what yellow jackets will ultimately do,
is attack any potential aggressor to their home,
follow, and sting, follow, and sting.
Now we're gonna place my naked hand inside of the box
to determine, "Are they still angry at me"?
"Am I gonna get stung?"
I have a feeling that this is gonna be pretty extreme.
(sighs)
Well, we have made it to
the third part of today's experiment.
Here's what we've learned so far.
Number one, yellow jackets
can definitely sink through a bee suit,
because I took close to 20 hits.
We also learned,
that once you disturb an angry yellow jacket nest,
it will follow you for at least 150 yards.
Now, the third part,
definitely the most entertaining part,
is going to be the angry yellow jacket box.
We have around a hundred of these stinging insects
inside of this contraption.
What I'm going to do is remove the trap door,
and my naked arm is going to go inside of the box.
The real question,
is after 15 minutes of being taken from their nest,
are they still angry?
Are they still gonna sting?
Are they just gonna crawl around on me?
I have a feeling
that this is probably going to be a little painful.
So here we go.
I'm Coyote Peterson,
and I'm about to enter the angry yellow jacket box.
One,
two,
three.
Here we go.
(suspenseful music)
Ow, ow, ow.
Definitely just getting stung immediately.
Ah!
Yep, a lot of stings really quickly.
All right guys,
I'm not gonna be able to keep my hand in here very long.
Ohhhh!
Okay, my hand's gotta come out.
Hands gotta come out.
You guys are gonna have to run
because these things are gonna be
swarming everywhere. - [Assistant] Wait, wait,
here, let's put the door back in.
- Okay. The door, the door, help, help, help.
- [Trent] You got it? Here.
(suspenseful music)
- Okay. This is, this was a bad idea.
Bad idea.
Put the door in.
Right there, right there, right there.
There, there, there.
No, no, it's not in the slot. Right there.
Right there. Right there. Right there.
Okay. Put, put in, put in, put in.
Oh, oh, man.
Oh, man.
Okay. Abandon ship.
Abandon ship.
Owwwww!
(suspenseful music)
Ahhhhh!
Ahhhh!
You know what they say?
Play stupid games,
you win stupid prizes.
Oh, yeah.
They're still really, really angry.
Oh my gosh,
I took a lot of stings.
Ahhh!
- Whooo! (laughs)
Man.
Fox worked. Got stung.
- [Coyote] Owww!
- Let me just try to come up here a little bit.
All right.
I'm gonna run down and capture him.
I think his hand was in there for maybe, what?
10 seconds, if that?
- 10 seconds.
Oh my gosh.
Holy cow.
My arm is on fire right now.
I'm getting, like, an instantaneous headache, too.
Okay.
So, the second my pointer finger entered into there,
they started swarming up the sleeve,
and stinging me again, and again, and again.
And so that a gazillion of them didn't get out
and all over the crew,
I had to keep my arm in there
while we tried to slide the backside of the box in.
I was just panicked.
I didn't know what to do.
That was super intense, and very, very painful,
very quickly.
- [Trent] Okay. Come out, come out, come out.
- There's a lot of stings really, really quickly.
I mean, a lot of stings.
Geez.
Oh.
Oh my gosh.
No, don't!
- Can I just see? It's, it's, a.
- I thought you were gonna squeeze into my hand.
- Yeah, let just put this little guy on there.
No hard feelings.
- Ugh.
- [Mario] No hard feelings.
- Ugh. (sighs)
Oh my gosh.
My hand is throbbing.
All right, hold on.
I gotta get, probably knows there's pheromones on me.
Oh my God.
Dude, it is really, really, really bad.
It is really, really bad.
- [Mario] You have Sting Heal?
- Yeah, I do have Sting Heal.
- [Mario] Want some water?
- I just need to breathe for a second, man.
It's freaking really, really, really painful.
Like, insanely painful.
Like, it's like, escalating to, like,
we're getting into, like, giant hornet territory here.
Oh my God.
Dude, look how fat my fingers and hand are getting.
- [Mario] Turn it around.
Inspect it.
(Coyote blows)
- [Coyote] Okay
- [Mario] Let me see the ones on the top of your wrist.
But stay still.
- I'm trying, dude.
This is such a bad idea.
I don't know what I was thinking.
This is a terrible idea.
Oh, we should have stopped at the bee suit.
This is absolute agony.
This is insane.
Like, we are approaching giant hornet pain territory
with this amount of venom being pumped in my arm.
Like, I'm like, losing my mind right now.
Ahhh!
- Blame it on the algorithm.
Oh, hey, how's it going guys?
There's an old saying that my boss used to tell me.
Number one,
if you're gonna be stupid, you gotta be tough.
And number two,
never put your hand in a box full of angry hornets,
or in this case, yellow jackets.
- So here's when I knew things were going completely wrong,
the second I pulled up in the gate
and the yellow jackets immediately went after my hand
and started stinging and biting my fingers.
I couldn't even get my hand
all the way into the box
before I needed to pretty much tap out.
I was like, "I gotta stop, I gotta stop".
At one point, I just almost, like, whited out,
and I was, like, "This is too much".
"What's happening to me?"
(muffled roaring)
So do I think yellow jackets are out to get people?
No, absolutely not.
And the reason yellow jackets and hornets
are this aggressive this time of the year,
is because they're no longer feeding their young,
and they're getting to the end of their life cycle.
They're grumpy.
And if you disturb their nest,
like you saw happen here today with me,
you're going to pay the wrath.
I cannot explain to you in words,
how painful the swelling and the throbbing in my arm
is right now,
but it is intense.
So whatever you do,
if you stumble across one of these nests and disturb it,
run!
Get yourself as far away as you possibly can,
and hopefully you will withstand the stings.
If you feel that your body
is having a negative allergic reaction,
seek medical attention as quickly as you possibly can.
And please, please, please,
as we always stress on "Brave Wilderness",
do not repeat the things
that you see me doing here on the channel.
This was ridiculously foolish.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave. (laughs)
Stay wild. (sighs)
We'll see you on the next adventure.
I need ice cream. (sighs)
(slow dramatic music)
That was, without question,
one of the worst nights sleep I have ever had.
The pain, and now the itching,
that came with the angry yellow jacket box,
is just unbearable.
I'd manage to doze off for about 10 or 15 minutes,
and then I wake up in agony,
And around 2:00 AM,
the itching started,
and I didn't even know how to itch.
I try to just do it really lightly,
because it hurts when I do itch it.
My hand is absolutely enormous.
You can see how swollen and puffy it is.
Ugh.
Angry yellow jacket box,
stupidest idea I've ever come up with.
(slow dramatic music)