The Yellow Jacket occurrence is located west of Surprise Lake along Pine Creek, about 9 kilometres east of the community of Atlin.

The mineralized zone is located directly under a well-developed placer area with a long history of production dating back to the late 1800s. A 26-metre shaft was sunk on the property in 1903 and reported to hit free gold but the shaft was filled with placer tailings and has not been located since. It was reported that the gold was hosted in quartz-filled fissures at mineable widths.

A shallow thrust along the southern slopes of Mount Munro and capping Spruce Mountain hosts many showings. A later steep fault along Pine Creek valley is also seen in showings.

The Yellow Jacket occurrence consists of a zone of quartz veins, breccia and silicified patches located within intensely altered and sheared upper Mississippian to Permian Cache Creek Complex ultramafic rocks. The ultramafics are bounded above by light green, hornblende feldspar porphyritic andesite and below by a darker green, and more massive andesite to basalt of the upper Mississippian to Permian Nakina Formation (Cache Creek Complex). The contacts are highly sheared and altered, often having slickensides. Around the contacts, the basalt is heavily chlorite altered and the ultramafic is altered to serpentine, fuchsite, talc, quartz and carbonate (listwanite assemblage). The talc/serpentine zones often grade into intense silicification. Within the ultramafic zone, there are abundant interbedded sequences of andesite/basalt. Shearing and alteration has occurred preferentially along the contacts of the interbedded mafic and ultramafic rocks.

The auriferous zone occurs near the top of the ultramafic zone which may define a fault zone. The zone is 3 to 4 metres wide with narrow quartz veins containing free gold within breccia and silicified zones. Pyrite, chromite and fuchsite occur as minor accessories. Samples from this zone have analyzed 15.1 grams per tonne gold over 4.0 metres and 17.8 grams per tonne gold over 3.1 metres (Vancouver Stockwatch - March 11, 1987). Minor magnesite is found in the auriferous zones.

Drill programs conducted by Homestake Mining Company in 1986 and 1987 have defined the mineralized zone over a 226 metre strike length with ore grade intercepts to 91 metres in depth. The favourable structure has been drill indicated over 2 kilometres and to a depth of 183 metres (George Cross Newsletter, No.213, 1988).

In 1983, local area prospectors staked the area of the Yellowjacket property and then optioned the property to Canova Resources and Tri-Pacific Resources. During 1984 and 1985, these companies conducted programs of ground geophysics, rotary and diamond drilling. In 1986, Homestake Mineral Development Company optioned the property from Canova in joint venture and initiated programs of mapping, reverse circulation drilling and diamond drilling. In 1988, Homestake completed a ground geophysical program which consisted of 5.5 kilometres of magnetic (total field and measured vertical gradient) and VLF-EM surveys. A diamond drill program was conducted in which 23 drillholes, for a total of 3255 metres, were completed. A resource estimate was reported following this work, of 453,500 tonnes grading 10.26 grams per tonne gold (www.eagleplains.com, Open File 2000-2 page 41).

In 1995, owners B. White and G. Lee conducted 7 kilometres of VLF-EM and magnetometer survey.

In late 2003, Muskox Minerals Corp. optioned the property and began exploration in December of that same year to further outline the extent, nature, grade and geometry of gold mineralization. The zone does not outcrop, therefore geological information about the zone is obtainable only through the examination of diamond-drill core. Two holes were drilled in December, the beginning of a 20-hole program that would continue in 2004. In 2004, two of twelve holes drilled by Muskox encountered coarse gold that yielded assay intercepts similar to those obtained by previous explorers. Drilling is reported to have totalled 3750 metres in the 12 holes. Muskox reported significant gold intersections of 513.5 grams per tonne over 5.56 metres in drillhole YJ03-01 and 128.15 grams per tonne over 0.5 metre in drillhole YJ04-01 (Press Release, November 15, 2004). In 2005, Muskox completed a 50 kilometre magnetic survey and, late in the year, resumed drilling. Six holes were drilled in the Yellow Jacket zone and 1.5 kilometres to the southwest, three holes were drilled in the Rock of Ages zone, for a total of 895 metres. Also in 2005, Prize Mining Corp. (formerly Muskox Minerals Corp.) reported the completion of a Technical Report on the property by consultant L. Dandy, P.Geo., dated February 15, 2005. In 2007, Prize Mining commenced a bulk sampling project and has been processing material on site. In September 2008, the company announced the first shipment of a 6.842-kilogram gold bar.

In 2010, Eagle Plains Resources Ltd. completed the purchase of Prize Mining's remaining interest in the Yellow Jacket Joint Venture and now holds 100%, subject to any underlying agreements. Based on the recommendations of a 2010 Technical Report, Eagle Plains carried out a reverse circulation drill program at the Yellowjacket in the fall of 2010. A total of 2181 metres in 64 holes was completed in the area of the proposed East pit extension. The results from the program are encouraging and further work is recommended to both better define mineralization for potential open pit mining operations and to test for mineralization both at depth and outside the area of the main Yellowjacket zone.

In September 2012, Yellowjacket Resources conducted a 51-hole drill program at the Yellowjacket property using a reverse circulation drill rig. A total of 2357 metres were drilled, and bedrock was sampled continuously with 1.016 metre intervals. In total, 2102 samples were sent for analyses. Of the 51 drillholes in the 2012 program, 44 drillholes were successfully completed and a further 7 drillholes were abandoned in overburden due to poor drilling conditions related to variability in the placer gravels overlying the bedrock. At the Pine Pit east extension, a total of 22 holes for 860 metres was completed, with 2 holes abandoned. This area lies directly east of the open pit mined in 2009, and includes the area tested by the prior operator through reverse circulation drilling in 2010. The 2012 program involved step out fences to test the projected pit to a bedrock depth of 25 metres and limited deeper holes to test the downdip mineralization on the south side of the main structure. A HLEM (Horizontal Loop Electromagnetic) survey on the Yellowjacket property was completed prior to the start of the drill program. The survey was designed as a follow-up survey to a test survey that was done in June 2012 to cover an area with good drill control of the grey clay zone (“Slumpy”) in the footwall of the ore zone. The HLEM survey totalled 12 lines and 2.35-line kilometres.

In 2013, Athabasca Nuclear Corp. conducted three focussed mapping projects in areas of newly exposed bedrock. These areas were being worked by placer miners who had uncovered bedrock as part of their mining or placer exploration programs. The sites were visited and mapped at 1:150 scale, and integrated into the Yellowjacket digital geology map database.

There was no activity from 2013 to 2015 when African Queen Mines Ltd. (AQM) acquired the Yellowjacket property. In 2016, AQM drilled four diamond-drill holes totalling 635.65 metres. Although two of the four holes could not be completed and did not reach their target, significant intersections were obtained in three of the holes including 1.5 metres of 3.2 grams per tonne gold in hole YJ16-01, 9.79 metres of 1.1 grams per tonne and 11 metres of 4.1 grams per tonne gold in hole YJ16-02 (Assessment Report 36977). Between 2006 and 2009, a water quality baseline and monitoring program was initiated on the Yellowjacket property. This included stream sampling along Pine Creek, installation of groundwater monitoring wells and construction of field leachate bins for metal leaching/acid rock drainage testing. Between 2010 and 2014, sampling was only conducted intermittently. After AQM acquired the property in late 2015, water quality monitoring was re-initiated for the 2016 season. Two water quality sampling episodes were completed in 2016 with results showing that stream water quality in Pine Creek is acceptable. Groundwater samples show elevations in iron but this does not appear to be migrating from the wells to the stream samples. The leachate data from the field bins indicates that sulphate, Cr, and Se are potential parameters of concern with respect to ML/ARD. Continued water quality monitoring at the Yellowjacket site will assist in AQM achieving its goal of re-opening the Yellowjacket mine in the future.