Yellowjacket Wasp (Vespulae) Cute Face Key Ring

This little yellowjacket aka yellow jacket wasp perches on a lollipop stick. You can see how small she is! This wasp portrait is done in subtle soft focus. You can change the writing at top to a name or brief words of wit & wisdom if you want. She has long sensitive feelers or antennae, pretty orange red legs and black markings like freckles on her yellow face plate. Every wasp has different markings, no matter how slight. Although they may live in colonies of several thousand, they are all individuals. The markings identify them to their siblings and other colony members, and may have significance in dominance ranking. Among yellowjackets, wasps of the same colony can be different. The Queen, who has survived her hibernation during the winter, emerges with the sunshine to start building her nest. She chews wood or plant fibres, and these mixed with wasp saliva form a kind of papier mache, used to construct the honeycomb formation and cells of the nest. She lays eggs and the first batch born are small worker wasps. The next set of female workers is bigger. Finally, in this species, the drones can be larger than the females. One colony can have multiple queens if they have the space - otherwise the reigning queen or her ladies destroy the eggs of other queens or egg-laying workers. Yellow jacket wasps have a reputation for aggression but this isn't always true. They have a lot of fun at my feeder, dive-bombing, buzzing and biting other wasps, of their own species or not, but it seems more like play and teasing than aggression. They are very clever and can recognise not just other wasps but humans too - they know who's naughty and who's nice! I give them sweet treats, sometimes from my hand - they lick up sugar water drops with their feathery mouth parts, and it tickles! Yellowjackets can deliver a nasty sting that causes pain and swelling for a day or so. However, its easy to minimise the chances of being stung - I've been feeding wasps for three years now and have not been stung. They are beneficial insects in the garden, catching pests and pollinating flowers. Don't grab them, hit them, sit on them, eat them or threaten their colony, and they will love you, and show you their secrets! Yellowjacket wasp nature photo by M Sylvia Chaume, Canada.