Yellowjacket Wasp (Vespulae) Cute Face Classic Round Sticker
A yellowjacket or yellow jacket wasp (Vespulae) perched on a lollipop stick. She's very small and has a cute face with black markings like freckles. The markings serve to identify the wasp to her colony and may be significant in dominance ranking. This cute wasp photo is in slight soft focus, like a 1940s movie star. Yellow jackets are social wasps who build enormous nests, for example in dead trees or old houses. They construct their nests from chewed wood or plant fiber mixed with wasp saliva. This creates a type of papier mache the wasps use for building. Nests are created in a honeycomb pattern of clustered cells. The Queen wasp lays eggs in the cells and these develop into larvae, which look like grubs. Adult wasps can't digest solid food. The worker wasps hunt insects to feed the young; in return, the wasp larvae exude sweet liquid, which the wasps drink. Yellowjacket wasps are common visitors to barbecues and outdoor events later in the summer, when the larvae have pupated and become adults, and there's no more food at the nest. Unfortunately they're not always welcome in human environs, as they perch on food or crawl into soft drink cans (this happened to me before I was smart enough to put my drink in a see-through glass! I got a yellowjacket sting in the mouth - painful and swollen for a day or so). Sometimes they approach people out of curiosity, and sadly, many people are afraid of them. Wasps can trigger phobias or primal fears similar to those associated with spiders and snakes. Fear of wasps can actually lead to being stung - the scared person slaps at them and the wasp thinks she's under attack, so may sting in self-defence. In all species of wasp the female wasps sting, males do not; both genders have strong jaws they use for cutting and biting. Wasp society is female-dominant, and males or drones are subservient. Females will bite or harass drones, but I have never seen a male wasp bite a female or retaliate in any other way. Wasps are welcome in my garden as they help eradicate insect pests and also help pollinate flowers. They recognize me as I give them sweet treats, and let me get quite close to them with the camera. Cute yellowjacket wasp face photo by M Sylvia Chaume, Canada.
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