Group 1
Bee
- BodyRound, robust
- TextureFuzzy all over
- ColorGolden brown to muted yellow
- WaistThick, indistinct
Three insects that look alike at a glance. They aren't. Here is how to tell them apart, who stings, and which ones to leave alone.
Insects · Identification · Backyard GuideFour cues will resolve almost any backyard sighting. Body shape, texture, color, and the waist between thorax and abdomen.
Bees are the round ones. Watch a bumble bee work a flower and you will see the difference immediately: stout body, dense fuzz, legs heavy with pollen. Honey bees are smaller and less plush but share the same blunt-edged outline.
There are over 4,000 native bee species in North America alone, and nearly all of them are gentle. Most are solitary: no colony to defend, no reason to sting. Even social bees like honey bees and bumble bees only sting in defense of the hive or when grabbed. A bee on a flower is not interested in you.
This is the group worth protecting. Roughly a third of the food we eat depends on insect pollination, and bees do most of the work.
Wasps are the slim, quick ones with the wasp-waist (this is where the term comes from). Smooth bodies, often a sharp yellow and black, almost always glossier than a bee. Yellowjackets are the stocky version most people picture. Paper wasps are leggier, with long legs that dangle in flight. Mud daubers are needle-thin and electric blue or black.
Most wasps are predators. They hunt caterpillars, flies, and aphids, which makes them quietly useful for any garden. The aggression people associate with wasps is almost entirely defensive: yellowjackets in particular guard their nests hard, and late summer is when colonies are largest and shortest-tempered.
A solitary paper wasp on a porch railing is rarely a problem. A nest tucked into a soffit you walk past every day is.
Hornets are wasps that grew up. They are noticeably larger than a yellowjacket, and they build the big football-shaped paper nests you sometimes find hanging from a tree branch.
In North America, the two you are most likely to meet are the bald-faced hornet (black and ivory, technically a yellowjacket but everyone calls it a hornet) and the European hornet (the rust-and-yellow one, the only true hornet on the continent). Both are striking up close: the European hornet's amber face and brushed-orange thorax are the photo above.
Hornets are not as quick to sting as a yellowjacket, but their nests are not negotiable. Give an active aerial nest a 10 to 15 foot buffer and they will mostly ignore you. Get closer and the colony will defend it.
Most stings happen for one of three reasons: someone stepped barefoot on a foraging bee, someone swatted at a wasp at a picnic, or someone got too close to an active nest. None of these involve an insect picking a fight.
A few rules of thumb:
A honey bee's stinger is barbed, so it stays in the wound and tears free of the bee, which then dies. Bumble bees, wasps, and hornets all have smooth stingers and can sting repeatedly. The lone honey-bee sting is the cost of a one-time defense; everything else is built to do it again.
Native bees especially are in steep decline, and the fixes are small and concrete. Plant flowers that bloom in sequence from early spring to late fall: willows and crocus for the early shift, asters and goldenrod for the late one. Leave a corner of the yard a little wild. Bare ground for ground-nesting bees, hollow stems for cavity nesters, leaf litter under shrubs.
Even wasps deserve a softer touch than they get. A paper wasp colony on the back of a shed is doing more for your tomatoes than any spray you could buy.