Blackjacket
Vespula consobrina
The blackjacket is a wasp dressed in black and white instead of yellow. It is a cousin of the yellowjackets and lives in big family groups. It likes forests and rarely meets people.
Lives in
Canada and the northern United States, in forests
Length
1 to 1.6 cm (0.39 to 0.63 in)
What does it eat?
Like its yellowjacket cousins, it feeds its young on insects, and the grown-ups like sweet things.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a row⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 17 seconds⚡moves 380 times its own body length every second
How big is Blackjacket compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Blackjacket about 22 km/h (14 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
The queen is the biggest of all, about 17 millimetres long.
2
It builds its nest in old mouse holes, rotten logs, hollow walls or gaps between rocks.
3
Another wasp, the bald-faced hornet, is sometimes also called blackjacket.
you asked
Most asked questions about Blackjacket
?Where does the blackjacket live?
In forests in Canada and the northern United States.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespula consobrina
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Vespula consobrina (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Jim Bell. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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