• Colour: Yellow and black
• Size: Between 11-25 mm in length

Wasps, yellow jackets and hornets live all over North America in meadows, orchards, woodlands, playgrounds, cemeteries, and urban and suburban settings. All wasps build nests, although they vary in their nesting preferences. A wasp habitat is a paper-like nest made from wood fibers that have been chewed into a pulp.

Wasps eat a wide range of invertebrates including spiders, caterpillars, ants, bees, and flies. It has also been suggested that wasps may prey on nestling birds. Wasps also collect honeydew. Honeydew is produced by a native scale insect.

Throughout Winter, the queen wasp hibernates in a cocoon, or golf ball-sized hibernation cell, having been fertilized by male wasps before hibernation. In Spring the fertilized queen wasp emerges from hibernation and looks for a suitable nesting site to build her colony.