Southern yellowjacket
The southern yellowjacket is a wasp with a black body and bright yellow stripes. It lives in huge families with a queen, who is bigger than the others and more orange. Most of its nests are hidden under the ground.
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Fun facts
One giant nest built in a pine tree and the ground below it was more than a metre wide.
A big nest can have more than 450,000 little rooms, called cells.
A young queen often sneaks into the nest of another kind of yellowjacket and takes it over. Then she lets the other wasps help raise her own babies.
Some nests keep going for more than one year when the weather stays warm.
It sends smelly messages to other wasps, for example to call for help when the nest is in danger.
Most asked questions about Southern yellowjacket
?Where do southern yellowjackets build nests?
Mostly under the ground in yards, parks and by roads, but sometimes up in trees or in walls.
?Do southern yellowjackets make honey?
No. They eat insects and dead animals and do not make honey.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespula squamosa
- Named by
- Drury, 1770
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Vespula squamosa (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 Bob Peterson from North Palm Beach, Florida, Planet Earth!. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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