Yellowjackets are often confused with honey bees, leading to questions about honey production. Yellowjackets are a type of social wasp, not bees. This fundamental distinction clarifies why they do not produce or store honey.
Yellowjackets Do Not Produce Honey
Yellowjackets do not produce honey because they are wasps, not bees, and their biological purpose differs from honey bees. Honey is a specialized food source honey bees create and store to sustain their colony through colder months. Yellowjacket colonies are annual; only the fertilized queen overwinters. Therefore, there is no biological necessity for yellowjackets to store large quantities of food like honey for prolonged colony survival. Unlike honey bees, yellowjackets lack the specific internal anatomy, such as a honey crop, and the behavioral adaptations required for nectar collection, processing, and storage into honey.
Yellowjacket Diet and Colony Life
Yellowjackets establish annual colonies, beginning each spring with a single queen. This queen emerges from overwintering and constructs a small, paper-like nest from chewed wood fibers, where she lays her first eggs. As the colony grows, worker yellowjackets, which are sterile females, take over the tasks of expanding the nest and foraging for food. Their diet is opportunistic and changes throughout the season, shifting from primarily predatory, hunting insects for larvae protein early in the year, to a preference for sugary substances like nectar, ripe fruits, and human food scraps for adult energy in late summer and fall.
Comparing Yellowjackets and Honey Bees
Distinguishing yellowjackets from honey bees is important due to differences in appearance, nesting habits, and dietary roles. Yellowjackets have bright yellow and black markings on a smooth, hairless body with a narrow waist. In contrast, honey bees are golden-amber, with fuzzy bodies that aid in pollen collection, and a more robust, cylindrical abdomen. Their nesting behaviors also vary. Yellowjackets construct paper nests, often found underground in abandoned burrows or within protected cavities like wall voids and tree stumps. Honey bees build intricate wax combs within hives, which can be natural tree hollows or man-made structures, and these hives are perennial, housing the colony year-round. Their diets reflect distinct ecological roles: yellowjackets are omnivorous predators and scavengers, feeding insects to their larvae and seeking sugars for adult energy, while honey bees are herbivores, relying on nectar and pollen for honey production and pollination.