Western Yellow Jacket

Western yellow jackets are ground-dwelling wasps. These wasps look a lot like honeybees in size and appearance with yellow stripes on their black bodies, but unlike honey bees they have no hairs and a much ‘sleeker’ look to their wings and body (up to 1.5 centimeters long). If you ever come face to face with the western yellow jacket look for the solid ring of yellow around its eyes! These wasps are omnivorous foragers, they eat both living prey and scavenge for dead animals, as well as sugary substances like nectar. Every spring the queen will start a new nest. The first eggs the queen lays turn into the first of her workers, and they continue to make the nest bigger throughout the summer and fall. In the winter, the workers will die off and the queen will go into hibernation. These wasps build their nest out of a paper-like substance, whereas bees excrete a waxy substance to build their hives.