identifying bees vs. yellowjackets

lol
Did you get stung today? Bad bug!

I don't understand the point you are trying to make though there are many more kinds of bees than your illustration shows and yellow jackets look nothing like bees.

Anne Miller wrote:I don't understand the point you are trying to make though there are many more kinds of bees than your illustration shows and yellow jackets look nothing like bees.

I believe the point being made was that bees are awesome, and yellow jackets/hornets suck.  And I couldn't agree more.

I didn't make the document, I found it.  

I would also like to see this format greatly expanded.  

For Paul

And...

I love these!  Post more!

All I can think is that none of you would survive my yard. I have neighbors who keep honeybees and there are many in my yard. I still think yellow jackets are the most numerous pollinators in my garden.

They never bother me, maybe two stings in the worst years when I accidentally disturb a nest. I've literally carried nests, in my bare hands, with wasps on them, to other areas of the yard without a problem. My mother on the other hand can't go anywhere near them. I've literally been standing next to her when she's been repeatedly stung and they ignored me.

actually Tod they are both female .
I thought your examples far superior to Pauls .

And...

Todd Parr wrote: I believe the point being made was that bees are awesome, and yellow jackets/hornets suck.  And I couldn't agree more.

While I can't say that I like yellow jackets, wasps or hornets they do have their place on earth.  I think that the jury is still out as to whether or not they are pollinators.  They eat insects and may eat nectar, if so then they maybe pollinators. They may eat those nasty bugs that are eating your veggies.

I have been stung by many a wasp; I know how much it hurts. Have you seen those flying fortresses in Asia/Japan. AMAZING! Thank goodness they aren't aggressive. That said, I'm not a little shocked by this thread. Wasps, bees, flies, and 'yellow jackets' are our partners in whatever it is we're doing. Have you ever seen a yellow jacket eviscerate a cabbage moth caterpillar? Yellow jackets play a vital role, just as we do, in the garden, the economy, and the world. If we can't get along with something that's just doing its job, how are we ever going to get along with each other?

No one is saying they are completely useless and should be eradicated. These pictures are not 100% factual and are only for humor. Like the previous post said just laugh at them. Read them chuckle a little and move on.

I've seen these memes on facebook. They are cute and are a real indication of how people feel about wasps. And too, wasps can sure be mean when they find reason to be.

On the other side of it, I've read bees and wasps are capable of facial recognition, and I personally believe they are very aware of body language. I admit, I have no real proof but it's what I believe.
I was stung by a wasp once many years ago when I was scared of them. My entire body language would have been one of fear. Near a predatory creature, I was practically begging to be stung.

Now that I like them and no longer fear them, I notice they never bother me. I welcome them in my yard and I think they recognize that by my body language.
The wasps have bothered other people with me (usually the scared ones who end up taking off their hat to try and kill the wasp - never a good idea) but they always leave me alone.

Hornets are totally different story. I rarely see one but they scare me. They always seem to be in a bad mood.

Hornets are wasps.

When bees are happy can literally take my boy right near the hive entrance and they will fly by us without a problem this spring has been different bees been cooped up too long and this cold wet spring has forced them to be cooped up much longer than what I would like.  hoping when the honey flow hits they mellow out.

image link
paper wasp vs yellow jacket
Image result for paper wasp vs yellow jacketwww.waspsgone.com
Paper wasps and hornets, like yellow jackets, are social wasps (that is, they form colonies) but they nest aboveground. They also help control garden pests. Both can inflict nasty stings and can be aggressive, but they don't scavenge like yellow jackets and so are less likely to show up at outdoor activities.
Paper wasps [lower right] are definitely capable of face recognition in my experience.  Because of the territorial nature of most wasps I have found it advantages to cultivate a close relationship with the paper wasps. Paper wasps are a sisterhood instead of a queen and worker army. There may be several nests close together for mutual protection. There nests are open so you can see them and they will face you and ask what are your intentions. Please talk to them, they will understand that you raise plants that bugs like to eat, so tell them they are welcome partners in your garden and if they are not able to stop a yellow jacket from making a nest nearby You will help destroy it so they don't rob their nest.
I have also moved their nests when in a wrong place.  I have also been stung for violating their space but they consider once lightly enough to reinforce the rules.

In years when I have more yellow jackets, I have fewer cabbage worms on my cole crops.

Justin Rhodes was just visiting the "Permaculture Orchard" guy and he sang the praises of yellow jackets, they help with the codling moth.

paul wheaton wrote:I didn't make the document, I found it.  

I would also like to see this format greatly expanded.  

The honey bee, amazing creature that it is, has purpose, and gets around. Works hard for the queen and has a unique place within the system  of pollenation, and is much established as an important part of life for flour and fauna alike.

The bumble bee also pollenates but produces less honey, yet seems to have a bit of a weight problem,(you do the math), which is offset by the fact that it defies the laws of physics just getting around according to Urban legend, giving us all a warm (little engine that could) feeling inside, or at least those of us with a soul.

The yellow jacket is a carnivorous bastard who is protected and fed by the queen herself until it grows up to be a predatory bully among other bullies. Socially anti social bastards....yet, part of the great cycle of life.  

Really, I know little about them all. I learned something today. Yay me. Thanks for the post.

I remember being SHOCKED I didn't get stung during my time on the lab, way back in the day.  That was a baaaaaaad year for yellowjackets.  A few years before that, we were having really aggressive yellowjackets towards the end of summer, and I started to wonder what the heck these bugs were good for.  I did a Google search, and learned that they eat soft bodied bugs, but that at the end of summer, when food sources are dwindling, they can get aggressive, and also that's when they seem to start bugging us while eating outdoors.  They want that steak!  I got a tip from a Swiss friend: open a can of cat food, and put it a safe distance from where you want to hang out.  The strong smell of the catfood attracts them, and they leave you (and your steak) alone.  It works just ok.  I've seen them on my artichoke plants in the garden, AND one time I had the incredible experience of having a yellowjacket land on a big chair I was sitting on outiside, I stayed calm and turned around to watch it, it was bathing its face, like a cat.  Then, a tiny inchworm happened along and the yellowjacket stopped bathing, picked up the little worm and SHOVED that thing into it's mouth like a log into a lumbermill!.  It was incredible!  The little worm was equivalent to about a 3'x1' diameter hot dog to a human, and it was gone in a second.  I watched all of this happen inches in front of my face.  AWESOME.

I try to come to peace with most creatures. I figure they serve a purpose. But last year was bad for yellow jackets. Really bad. It gave me a new perspective on when people say they have a "yellowjacket problem" and when people have a yellow jacket problem. When it's dry and they're established, I learned there is no way prevention, no avoidance, no "being at peace" with them. I learned this as three yellow jackets were crawling on my face, one trying to drink from my eyeball while one of my friends told me to "just stay calm and they'll go away". She got bit in the face that day. These creatures have no sense of self-worth. This puts them at the top of the food chain, because they just don't give a single fuck about anything (including staying alive). The queen is the only one that matters, and she never leaves the nest. Every winter all the workers and males die. They thrive on a cycle of assholery and suicide. This spring, I hung up 15 yellow jacket traps around my cabin. It was a really wet winter. We have almost no yellow jackets. I remind myself of how grateful I am for this every single day.

I did learn three very important things last year:

1. It's awesome to watch bald faced hornets dive bomb and tackle yellow jackets mid-air. The hornets have no effect on yellow jacket populations.

2. Yellow jackets love yellow. Tractors are yellow. Get an enclosed cab if you value your sanity.

3. There are few more cathartic experiences than lighting a yellow jacket nest on fire (I know, I know…). You can only get bit so many times before you have to get revenge.

2015 the neighbor kids decided one afternoon when my peaches were NEARLY ripe, to come over after school while I was doing errands, pick all the peaches they could reach looking for ripe ones and purposely hurled the ones that weren't into the pavement and stomped on them. The mother of one of them, neighbor to one side was looking for her oldest as they had stuff to do after school and caught them. She rounded up all five of them and made them stand in front of me and apologize. That also explained where half my grapes went.

Last year, I had hornet pods in almost every apple tree and grape vine. Small ones. I knew they were there. No kid was trespassing. None. I wanted to harvest I put two lawn sprinklers on and SOAKED the yard. Wet cold hornets don't like flying. I picked things off quickly and did hornet eradication the next morning at dawn.

Cheaper than a bag of dogfood a week to keep the kids minding their business elsewhere. I had a few this year, not like last, but enough to keep the kids honest.

A friend years ago in big urban; had part of her storm/screen door out and paper wasps made a big nest between inner and outer door. She left it there, put a huge sign with plain lettering saying "HORNETS" and an arrow. We had lots of door to door salesmen and religious recruiters come to the door all the time. She said she seen ZERO. She used the side garage door which wasn't obvious and in the house she kept the inner door locked with the chain on.

If they're going to be PITA's, make them earn it at least.

My brother bought land a couple of weeks ago.  My whole family was walking along the top of a ridge line just looking at things when we walked near a ground hornet nest.  My father got stung on the arm and I got it on the nose right between the eyes.  I can only think the people that talk about peacefully co-existing with these assholes has never met one.

I was stung by a wasp once many years ago when I was scared of them. My entire body language would have been one of fear. Near a predatory creature, I was practically begging to be stung

 I had an experience once on Haida Gwaii crossing a swamp full of tall salal.  I was walking on a large spruce log (maybe 4 feet diameter) which had fallen in from a peninsula, stepping over stiff intertwined salal branches, carefully and fairly slowly when my foot crushed through the log, punching my leg, groin deep into the rotted out hollow core.  I pulled my leg out with difficulty, and recommenced my journey on the log, carrying a 5 gallon pale of wet chantrelles in each hand (thankfully only a few had spilled down deep into the swamp water) and another bucket full on my back pack frame.  After about ten feet of walking, I heard what sounded like a giant double sized off-highway logging truck blasting down a logging road, which I knew could not possibly be the case since I was about 2 miles up a mountain from the nearest road.  When I turned to look, there was a column of bald faced black hornets blasting out of the hole, like the exhaust from an antique coal locomotive.  It must have been a massive multi-queen hive.   I knew that if I reacted in fear, they would sense it, and I would be stung, and if I was stung for sure I would not be able to suppress some kind of reaction.  If I was stung once, I was sure that I would be stung a thousand times.  I did not, nor could I, run.  I turned, and with the mantra in my mind, "I am not afraid; I'm going to make it out of here without getting stung."  I carried on very slowly --a slow motion mime of my previous actions, all the way to the upturned root cluster of the spruce.  There I turned around and the hornets were still in the same location, milling about, but none had approached me.  I thanked my lucky stars that the hive wasn't directly below me when I crushed through the rotten tree.  They must have been quite a bit further down the hollow center.  I would certainly be dead from anaphylaxis if I had been stung by so many.  Nobody could withstand that many stings.  I was so grateful also for my intuition to suppress both my fear and the subsequent reactionary response to seeing such scary and potentially deadly thing so close.

I have been stung by these since then.  These are far worse stingers and more aggressive than ground wasps, mud wasps, or paper wasps... and yet when I see them on my property, I tend to leave them alone, for much the same reasons as others have stated.  If I do have to remove them, and they are near an electrical source, I bring out the shop vac.  Place the nozzle right at the entrance.  Turn it on and strike the nest with a stick.  The wasps exit the hive right into the waiting vacuum, beating themselves up in the hose and chamber.  After a few moments, vacuum up the rest of the nest.    

I beg to ask though, how do you empty the shopvac after you sucked them up?

You vacuum up some pebbles too; so have some ready.  I forgot to mention that.   The wasps get beat up pretty bad on the way down the hose and into the chamber in the first place. The pebbles finish off the stragglers.  Im assuming since they need water, they die of dehydration if not the wounds. It's fairly brutal but it works and I don't get stung.  If I can't get the shop vac near them, I throw lances at the nest periodically and run like hell.  Sooner or later they tend to get the idea that they should move.

Wow, I never knew the difference.. the gifs are as hilarious as knowledgeable. We do have some of the borer bees now that its spring, assume they are part of the good guys.

We've been appreciating the hornets around here - watching them devour earwigs and other bugs that are eating our veg in the garden.

And....today I was pulling some prickly lettuce next to a nest that I didn't know was there and was stung!

Someone shared this with me and it certainly goes in this thread!



Even this Twitter poster ended up defending his humor about wasps. Personally, I think it's okay to joke about how formidable these little critters are! They are mean sons of a gun, *and* we are happy they're being biological pest control for us.

Todd Parr wrote:  I can only think the people that talk about peacefully co-existing with these assholes has never met one.

Can't say any better! I got stung 2 days ago by one of these fockers (Vespa orientalis). Oh man! That pain is so intense! It literally makes you forget about all the problems you are facing.
Two days ago, while I was laying down on the couch I felt a sudden intense pain in?/on? my pinky toe. When I looked down to my feet, there was this bugger going full Lebowski, like "die die die you motherf@#@#", and stung me four-five times before I was able to throw it away. The asshole flew back to my feet to sting it again (over my ankle) while I was screaming with pain, rolling on the floor and asking for help. You really start to question motives at this point. Why, seriously why?
I am allergic to bees. I was rushed to ER, with difficulty in breathing and with a swollen whole leg. I don't remember much about what happened over there, I fainted at some point. I am better now, but my feet still hurts.
One more thing lingers other than the pain, my curiosity about what it's deal was with my pinky toe? Was it too small for it's artistic taste or too human?
Those fockers are welcomed in the garden despite this little misunderstanding. But if they ever enter the house -ever-, I will cut them into pieces.

I learned stuff here! Mostly that the wasps I have are paper wasps and mud daubers and I will not assume they are evil. I'll watch for the flying assholes, now that I know what they look like. Cool.
I have always been nice to wasps I meet (paper and mud) and never had any issues with them. Never met a yellowjacket, I guess.

Yellow-jackets, like all insects, play a vital tole in the eco-system, but as has been pointed out here, they are very defensive and have no qualms about stinging you endlessly until you kill them or they get bored.

If you are being harassed by a yellow jacket, you are likely very close to their nest. They tend to display defensive behavior within about a 100 ft. circumference of the nesting site. This is why, despite their aggressiveness, they typically do not chase you very far if you run. This can be used to your advantage in locating the nest. It's also helpful to know, because if you see a yellow jacket nest more than 100 ft. away from anywhere you typically go, it's probably safe to leave it alone. After all, they play an important role in managing the population of other insects.

If you do want to control the yellow jacket population in certain areas, buy a few liters of soda or another beverage as a treat to yourself. Once you've drank the contents, cut the top off to make a funnel. Put a handful of meat scraps (preferably something with a little sweetness as well, like sausage with apple chunks in it) into the bottle and pour some water in there, enough to cover the meat a bit. Now invert the top of the bottle you cut off and stick it pointy side down into the bottom portion of the bottle. Tape the seams together, coat the funnel with some olive oil or other grease, and hang it in a tree or other high area. Do this in a few spots during early spring, and you will likely catch at least a few Yellow Jacket queens that may otherwise have started a nest on your property. By taking out the queen, you hopefully prevent the nests from even becoming established in areas where you place the traps.

The water and meat will ferment through the spring and into summer, hopefully catching a few more. It should not attract any honey bees or other pollinators, only predatory wasps (unless you put some REALLY sweet meat in there). For this reason, you don't want to use sugar as bait. This will catch you yellow jackets, but also honeybees, etc. In fall, yellow jackets will no longer be as interested in the meat, as they will be fattening up for winter with carbs. Take down your traps, wash them out, and re-use next year.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:You vacuum up some pebbles too; so have some ready.  I forgot to mention that.   The wasps get beat up pretty bad on the way down the hose and into the chamber in the first place. The pebbles finish off the stragglers.  Im assuming since they need water, they die of dehydration if not the wounds. It's fairly brutal but it works and I don't get stung.  If I can't get the shop vac near them, I throw lances at the nest periodically and run like hell.  Sooner or later they tend to get the idea that they should move.

Maybe some DE would be a good idea, if you happen to have some DE spilled in your shop somewhere. That will definitely finish any of them off. And then you can use them as mulch!

-CK

During the height of caterpillar season, I love watching hornets hunt on my fava bean and brassica plants.  Have not been stung yet.

Alex Arn wrote:During the height of caterpillar season, I love watching hornets hunt on my fava bean and brassica plants.  Have not been stung yet.

My paper wasps and mud daubers are tent caterpillar (web worm?) eating fiends. We had a bad year for them, so I was opening the webs up for the wasps, who went in and killed them right and left as soon as they could reach them. The webby stuff kept them out.  

I am finding all this fascinating. Having lived in So Cal nearly all my life I have never really had to contend with the A$$HOLES being spoken of. Once, while at a 2 week long summer camp of a working cattle ranch above Fresno, we were all on horses, riding to a place where we could slide down a waterfall rock slide as a day trip. We were told to be as quiet as possible passing one location we were told had a burrowing hornet that could be especially aggressive. Never saw a thing.

A few years ago I was watching my grapes and luffa sponges being pollinated by the paper wasps we do have here. I had never really occurred to me that more pollinators were out there, not just the bees. I then would allow nests to be on the property but not right at the house, so they got to keep house among the honeysuckle along the fenceline farthest from the house. We were always wary of each other, those paper wasps and I, but I respected their space and they refrained from stinging me!