Identifying Bees versus Wasps
How to Tell a Bee from a Wasp
Bees and wasps are not the same! They are in separate evolutionary families (e.g., Colletidae for bees and Vespidae for wasps), although their families both fall inside the same order (Hymenoptera).
It is unfortunate that so many people, especially city dwellers, do not know that bees and wasps are two distinct animal groups. Moreover, whereas bees are generally docile, wasps are usually highly aggressive. The difference in aggressiveness can be accounted for by the fact that a bee that stings a human is committing suicide, because her barbed stinger remains lodged in the victim’s skin. When the bee pulls away from the person after the sting, her stinger stays behind and tears out of her body along with other entrails. She disembowels herself. It’s very ugly, and bees don’t want to do it. Wasps, on the other hand, have smooth stingers and they will ram the needle into their victim over and over again, stinging away to their little hearts’ content with no harm done to themselves.
Bees and wasps share some morphological characteristics because they are evolutionarily related inside Order Hymenoptera (a reference to their translucent, membranous wings). Hymenoptera originated in the Triassic, and there is evidence that the Hymenoptera have co-evolved with flowering plants.
I believe that many people who claim to have been stung by a “bee” have in fact been stung by a wasp. Not only are bees friendlier than wasps, they also take a bad rap for their cousins’ aggressiveness.
Appearance of Bees Versus Wasps (see images above)
Bees look rounded. This because of a dense growth of fuzzy-looking hairs on their bodies. Bees typically appear fluffy. Older field bees will have lost many of their hairs and will appear somewhat more tapered because their thinner fuzz reveals more of their true body shape. Bees are honey-colored to light yellow with darker-brown to blackish rings on their bodies. The color transitions are fuzzily delineated. Their coloring appears rather dull. Their legs are colored black.
Wasps, in contrast, have no hairy-looking “fur” on their bodies. Their long, streamlined, and sharply tapered body shapes are very distinctive. Wasps superficially resemble flying ants. Their bodies are marked by sharply delineated alternating black-and-yellow bands and splotches. The black zones look glossy and the yellow zones are very bright and also rather glossy-looking. Their legs are colored bright yellow. The photos should help you to tell the difference between a wasp and a bee.
Bee Hives Versus Wasp Nests
Wasp nests are made of thin sheets of brownish-beige-colored paper or mud (made by paper wasps and mud-dauber wasps, respectively). Sometimes you cannot see a wasp nest because it is hidden beneath a concrete or wooden porch. A telltale sign of an underground wasp nest will be clipped-down grass or weeds at the nest entrance. (The wasps cut down the grass and weeds to keep the entrance clear.) Visible wasp nests are usually sort of ball-shaped and are routinely found in such places as roof eaves and old sheds. If you have a wasp nest on your property, you should dispose of it. If you use a chemical insecticide, please use it strictly in conformance with the instructions on the packaging. Contact a professional if you aren’t sure what to do.
Honeybee hives are made of flat sheets of wax (honeycomb). They are normally hidden inside old logs or disused birds’ roosting boxes. They are full of honey, pollen, and brood. Bumble bees (also called humble bees) may live in small underground burrows, often modified from mouse nests. Like their cousins the honeybees, bumble bees are docile and should be encouraged as they are excellent pollinators. Bumble bees pollinate some plants that honeybees either do not visit or are not equipped to pollinate. There are native, wild bees that inhabit many places on the Earth (see above for two images of a native Colorado bee that I photographed in 2006 at over 10,000 feet altitude on Medano Pass in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains). Native bees should be especially encouraged because we need their biodiversity and their specialized abilities for pollination of specific, unusual plant species.
If you discover a wild bee hive on your property, please don’t destroy it. All bees, including wild, native bees and honeybees, need all the help they can get, as do the plants that they pollinate. Call a beekeeper and ask them to move the hive to another location if it is bothersome for you to have it on your land. A beekeeper will move it for free, and you will have done your part to help to maintain our rapidly-deteriorating environment.
Go to the Using My Photos page on this site for instructions on how to obtain high-resolution versions of these images from me. I don’t charge money for my photos, but I do require a photo credit in your end-product in exchange for the use of my images. Key words: honeybee images; Colorado native bee images; wasp image.
Honeybee diagnostic image
Wasp diagnostic image
Native high altitude Colorado bee 01
Native high altitude Colorado bee 02
