Yellow jackets, hornets, and velvet ants are a few examples of the thousands of kinds of insects called wasps. People tend to fear wasps because of their painful sting. Many types, however, do not sting. Those that do sting are usually responding to a human action, such as swatting at them or touching their nest.

Where wasps live

Wasps can be found throughout the world on all major islands and on every continent except Antarctica. They are most plentiful in tropical areas. Many wasps spend much time at their nests, which can look like strips of paper glued together. Nests can be found in a variety of places, including branches, hollow trees, rodent burrows, wood, and the eaves of buildings.

Physical features

Wasps can reach a length of more than 2¹/₂ inches (6 centimeters), but some types are among the smallest insects in the world. Likewise, wasps can be various colors. The yellow jacket and some others are black with yellow markings. Cuckoo wasps are bright metallic green or blue. Velvet ants (which are wasps, not true ants) often have black and red patterns.

Wasps usually have two pairs of clear wings, with the back pair being a bit smaller than the front. The wings and six legs are attached to the thorax (the middle segment of the body). Although most wasps are good at flying, a few types cannot fly.

Behavior

Some kinds of wasps live in groups known as colonies. These insects are called social wasps and include yellow jackets and hornets. The colony starts in the spring with a fertilized female—known as the queen—building a nest in which to lay her eggs. This first batch of eggs hatches into workers—females with bodies that are not capable of reproducing. The workers gather food and help the queen make the nest larger for her second batch of eggs. This second batch hatches in the autumn and contains both males and females that are quickly able to reproduce. By wintertime in cold regions, all members of the colony have died except for the newly fertilized females. These females hibernate through the winter and come out in the spring to be queens.

Other types of wasps do not form colonies and are known as solitary wasps. Many of these wasps build sealed nests filled with a good supply of paralyzed (unable to move) insects for the young wasps to eat when they hatch. Other solitary wasps do not build nests at all. Instead they smuggle their eggs into the nests of other insects or lay their eggs in the tissues of plants.

Wasps and humans

Wasps can be helpful creatures in that they eat many troublemaking insects. Wasps also help spread pollen when they visit flowers to eat nectar. Their quest for sugar, however, makes them unwanted visitors at many picnics. They are greatly attracted to soda cans. People can keep some wasps away by covering their food outdoors as much as possible and by putting garbage in sealed containers.