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When you see something yellow and black flying around in the air, you may automatically think it’s a bee. Or, you may always wonder if it’s a bee, or a wasp? The difference can be hard to tell, because bees and wasps do have so much in common, such as how they both seem to have a waist with a bauble of a body on either end. They both also have stingers and antennae, and they both fly around in the air. But what is the difference? The first major difference is that people tend to be more scared of wasps, even if they don’t know what they’re looking at. But this is for very good reason.

Although both bees and wasps have stingers, a bee’s stinger is ripped off of their body when they sting someone. This causes the bee to die after stinging and is the reason why bees can only sting once. Wasps, on the other hand, have incredibly strong stingers and they remain with the wasp even after the wasp has stung someone. Because of this, not only will a wasp not die if it stings you, but it will be able to sting you over and over again.

If you want to be able to tell if you’re near a bee or wasp, and you want to be able to tell before it stings you, you might be able to determine what the insect is just by looking at it. Bees are often much fuzzier than wasps and tend to have many hairs along their entire body, especially their legs. Wasps on the other hand, have a much more slender and smooth appearance.

Lastly, look at what the insect is near or eating if you want to be able to tell whether it’s a bee or wasp. Bees are workers and their job in life is to go out during the day and collect pollen for honey. Because of this, bees will usually be seen around flowers or live plants. Wasps, on the other hand, are scavengers and so, they will collect around anything that they can eat. This includes things like food, waste, and decaying plants.

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Tags: bees, wasps

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 2:00 am and is filed under bees, wasps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.