Janice Riggs, age 11, of Eugene, Oregon, for her question:

What good are yellow jackets?

The waspy yellow jackets, as we know, are insects. And the world of insects could get along very well, thank you, if there were no people in the world at all. But people could not get along at all if the insects disappeared from the planet Earth. Directly or indirectly, plants depend on insects and without the plants; the entire animal world would fail to survive.

It is true that the yellow jacket has a waspy stinger and seems to be nothing more than a nasty nuisance. But this is not the whole story. To get the true picture, we must try to see her role in the whole scheme of nature. After all, let's remember that any little thing that goes wrong in the global ecology is bound to upset our plans sooner or later.

For example, if there were no yellow jackets, the price of corn and so all corn products and meat from corn fed animals would be higher and inflation would be worse than it already is. And this is not all. In the central and eastern parts of North America, a shortage of yellow jackets would create shortages of certain other grains and field crops.

The large, gaily striped yellow jacket can jab her fierce stinger into your flesh and inflict a fiery bump, true, but this is a rather small nuisance when we consider all the other duties she performs during her daily life.

The waspy yellow jackets eat overripe fruit and other soft vegetable foods. But their main diet is the soft meat and juices of other insects. As our fields of corn grow tall, the young ears often are attacked by a greedy caterpillar called the corn earworm. This happens to be a favorite food of the yellow jacket who often feeds its juices to her young. Hence, with more yellow jackets around there are fewer corn earworms and more healthy ears of corn.

Another favorite food of the yellow jacket is the devouring armyworm of Central and Eastern North America. These armyworms are moth caterpillars that hatch in multitudes and march across the fields devouring young grains and other tender crops. There are not enough yellow jackets to destroy all the teeming armyworms, but they do reduce the teeming hordes.

Dozens of different moth and butterfly caterpillars attack numerous plants in our fields and gardens. And a mortal enemy of one and all is the yellow jacket who also disposes of many maggots that otherwise would become pesky house flies.

If we judge the handsome yellow jacket merely by her sting, we have to admit she is a bad tempered pest. But to be fair, we must include all the evidence of her more general usefulness. Then we must regard her as an ally, for she reduces the populations of many pesky grubs that devour our field and garden crops. And, when there are shortages of these foods, they cost more. Hence, you might say that the yellow jacket does a little bit to help control inflation