When it comes to working in the yard or playing outside, flying insects can make life difficult. While both female wasps and honeybees can sting, there are some differences in their anatomy as well as their behavior.
Appearance Differences
Bees are hairy with a robust body and flat rear legs. Their colors range from all black to black or brown with orange or yellow stripes. Wasps have a narrow waist that attaches their thorax to their abdomen with four wings. They have slender legs and can be brightly colored with black and yellow markings.
Behavior Differences
Bees are generally mellow, concentrating on traveling to different flowers, and typically sting only when their hive is threatened. A honey bee can only sting one time. That’s because their barbed stinger that gets lodged into you rips off part of their abdomen and digestive track along with muscles and nerves, resulting in their death. Wasps are naturally more aggressive creatures who prefer to stalk people in search of food and can sting you multiple times.
A queen wasp is the one who is responsible for building a nest for her colony. Usually, wasp colonies tend to be less than 10,000. However, over 75,000 bees can live in a colony at one time, working together to maintain the hive. During the winter, honeybees live on food they reserved and stay warm by forming a cluster in the central area of the hive surrounding the queen. Wasps, on the other hand, hibernate during the winter and build a new nest during autumn.
Removing Wasps or Bees from Your Home or Business
If you notice a wasp nest or beehive on your property, contact the experts at Critter Control® of Tampa for safe and effective removal. For more information or to receive a free estimate, call us today.
