Alaska report: Hornets heading northward

While researching a spike in the number of yellow jackets in the Fairbanks area during 2006, University of Alaska entomologist Derek Sikes has determined that the notorious stinging wasps are spreading northward. Reviewing a database of the state's Medicaid patients, Sikes and his associate found a seven-fold increase in insect stings in northern Alaska within the past decade--from an average of 16 people (per 100,000) per year between 1999 and 2001 to 119 people a year from 2004 to 2006. In the Fairbanks News-Miner.