All Abuzz About the Yellow Jackets

My daughter is a sophomore in high school. The nickname attached to her school is the yellow jackets. This imagery is woven throughout student life, well beyond sports teams. For instance, students can earn the honor of being named a "top jacket," etc. The student section at football games is called "the hive." While this purple-populated weekly gathering is a long-standing tradition, I have a problem.
What kind of flying, stinging insect lives in a hive? A BEE! Yellow Jackets are wasps. They build nests. They most assuredly do not live in hives.
Why "the hive?" Why not "the colony?" Because they're not ants, that's why. Why not "the web"? Because they're not spiders! Why not "the school?" Well, um, that would be kind of stupid and besides...they're not fish! They're yellow jackets.
The name isn't that important. The social interaction is. They cheer, jeer, sing, hang out together...and, a critical factor: they express themselves with face and body paint. In fact, my daughter walked away from the cheerleader business primarily because she was missing so much in "the hive," and the cheerleaders are limited to some kind of face decal.
I just hope that stuff doesn't cause a rash. Now, that would sting.

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