Yellow Jacket, Colorado

Transcription

Typically we see two types of wasps around schools and homes: the European paper was and the Western yellow jacket. According the the American College of allergy, asthma, and immunology, more than two million Americans are allergic to stinging insects. Ryan Davis: So how do you tell the difference between them in the field? Well, there are probably three or four main things that I would look for: the European paper wasp and the Western yellow jacket look similar in terms of their coloration and their general size. Yellow jackets are a little smaller than the Euro paper wasp. Legs of the Euro paper wasp are longer and so in flight those legs dangle underneath and you can see that pretty readily vs. the Western yellow jacket; it has shorter legs. As far as the anatomy goes, it would be the shape of the abdomen. For the yellow jacket, starting at the stinger end, it sort of tapers up and gets wider and wider and then right before it reaches the middle part the insect it kind of just bluntly ends like that vs. the paper wasp. So starting again at the stinger end it would just slowly expand and widen and then comes gradually back down together toward the peteole or that thin area between the thorax and the abdomen. Paper wasps are sometimes mistaken for yellow jackets. This fact sheet will help you determine which is which. Matt Camper: All three of the different typical wasp species nest in different locations. The typical European paper wasp has an open nest, so when you look at it you can see the individual cells inside. It's usually in up/out of the way places. So it could be on the eve of a house, on a restaurant, on a playground, underneath the slide, or if the play structure has some sort of roof-like structure it would be up inside that area. That's where you would see it. The Western yellow jacket is a below ground species so you would typically find it up against a crack of concrete with a burrowing hole going down, inside an old rodent burrow, so if there are prairie dogs near a park area they could be down in and old burrow. They also nest within wall voids but they typically like out of the way places. As you can see, it takes a keen eye to discern the differences between the European paper wasp and the Western yellow jacket.