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Wasps and Hornetswasps?
Hello Bugman:
I would like to say that when I first "stumbled" on your site I was a little repulsed but the next thing I knew, I found myself spending hours looking at the different bugs and reading your mail. To my amazement, I found that some of those bugs are beautiful. Your site is now in my "favorites". We have two types of wasps in our back yard. After getting over my fear and impulse to get rid of them, I realized that they are not aggressive and seem to be eating something off our hostas and peonies although I can’t see what. There are at least 20 wasps at all times. My question is this: Do they sting? Can they become aggressive?
Thanking you in advance,
Hélène Bélanger
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| Polistes Paper Wasp | European Paper Wasp |
Hi Hélène,
Both of your wasps are Paper Wasps in the genus Polistes. The brown one is a native species. For more information on the yellow and black one, we turned to Eric Eaton. He wrote this: “There is no such thing as a “solitary” paper wasp:-) They are social, just have pretty small colonies. This one is the European paper wasp, Polistes dominulus, introduced to the U.S. back in the 1990s and now one of the most common urban wasps. It may even be displacing some native Polistes in certain areas. Eric”
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Comments 1
Yes the one on the left is P. fuscatus the one on the right is the invasive P. dominula
Posted 10 Dec 2008 at 9:12 pm ¶Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.
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