The painful stings from wasps, hornets and bees can worry employees, customers and suppliers in commercial environments across New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Wasps and hornets are attracted to sweet foods and drinks, so they are especially a threat to people and facilities in food and drink businesses, hospitality, and healthcare.
This guide helps commercial operators identify types of wasps, hornets and bees to evaluate how severe the issue is, and to find the cause. If you've already got an active issue that you need help with, just jump straight to our commercial wasp, hornet and bee control services, if not, then read on.
With so many different species to deal with, it can be hard to tell these bugs apart. It’s good to know which one you’re dealing with as wasps and hornets won’t respond to the same treatment as bumble bees. And where possible, we try to relocate honey bees with local beekeepers.
Honeybees are smaller and less round than bumblebees. But they’re still hairy and robust, so they can collect pollen.
They store nectar in their stomachs and break it down to produce honey, which they store as their winter food source to survive the winter.
Bumble bees have much rounder bodies than honey bees. As they sip the nectar from the flowers, their short downy hairs attract pollen to pollinate the flora and fauna as they buzz from one to another.
Wasps typically have smooth bodies and narrow waists. So they are ideal as predators and food scavengers. They still partly help with pollination. Many like the bald-faced hornets and yellowjackets are often called hornets but they are actually wasps.
Hornets are larger and more robust than wasps. They often have a reddish-brown thorax and legs, a thick, rounded abdomen and a broader, orange-tinted head.
Finding a hornet’s nest early can prevent a large infestation, as their colonies grow rapidly in the summer and they can be very defensive.
Wasps live in diverse environments, often building paper nests from chewed wood fibers in sheltered spots under eaves or in lofts, or even in tree branches or underground burrows.
Hornets often build large, enclosed aerial nests with a sturdy paper-like substance. They usually nest high in trees, within dense shrubbery, or sometimes in hollow walls.
Bees live in various habitats, with honeybees inhabiting complex wax-comb hives in hollow trees or managed boxes, while many solitary species tunnel into soil or wood.
Wasps mainly eat insects like flies and caterpillars. They also eat sugary nectar and fallen fruit.
Hornets eat bigger prey, including grasshoppers and honeybees. Plus, they also eat tree sap, and high-protein carrion.
Bees feed almost entirely on carbohydrate-heavy nectar and protein-rich pollen collected from flowers.
Wasps can sting repeatedly as they have smooth stingers that don’t get caught in the skin.
Hornets also have smooth stingers, so they can sting over and over again.
Bees: Bumblebees can sting repeatedly as they have smooth stingers. But honeybees die after stinging as their stingers are barbed, so they stay in their target’s body.
Wasps, Hornets & Bees: If you’re stung by one you’ll probably experience a burning sensation in the affected area. If you have a bee sting kit, it will also work for wasp and hornet stings. Keep the sting area clean and use a cold compress to ease discomfort. Apply hydrocortisone or calamine lotion to itchy stings.
If the sting becomes infected, or you have severe symptoms, call a doctor immediately.
If you’re allergic, stings can be dangerous—even life-threatening—and cause you to go into anaphylactic shock. If an allergic person is stung, call for emergency help right away.
Wasps, hornets and bees all have the same life cycle stages including egg, larvae, pupa, and adult.
They live with a single fertile queen that lays all the eggs, which are then fertilised by seasonal drones. Once the eggs hatch into larvae (about 3 days), they are fed and cared for by sterile female workers until they pupate for 7 to 30 days and emerge as adults. In colder climates, only the new mated queens survive the winter by hibernating, starting entirely new colonies alone in the spring.
Wasps are assertive predators that show territorial behavior to protect their nests and use their stingers repeatedly to hunt prey or defend their colony from threats.
Hornets are highly protective of their colonies and are extremely aggressive if disturbed, often mobilizing the entire hive to repel and chase intruders over long distances.
Bees are mostly non-aggressive and focus on pollination. They only sting in self-defense or if the hive is threatened, as many species die after delivering a single sting.
There are social and solitary species. Social wasps are eusocial: so they live together as one hive with clear caste roles. Queens produce eggs, drones mate with queens, and workers build the large papery nests from regurgitated wood pulp and maintain the colony.
Solitary wasps often live underground and are less aggressive.
In the fall, the social wasps’ nests collapse and all members become solitary, so you see more wasps foraging on their own.
If you see many hornets flying in and out of a single hole or crevice in your siding, soffits, or roofline, then you’ve probably got a hornets’ nest.
You may also hear a low-pitched buzzing or "tapping" sound coming from behind a wall or ceiling. This is often the noise of the insects working on the nest, or it's the vibrations of their wings.
About half of the bee species in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are eusocial, so they live and maintain the colony.
The remaining native bees of the Tri-State area are solitary varieties like digger bees which nest underground.
Wasps, hornets or bees nests and hives are typically caused either by a sanitation issue, a building weakness, or a surrounding environment issue, or by a combination of them. So understanding the scale of your issue early on is the best way to protect your business and avoid expensive treatments later on.
Find out how our technicians deal with problem stinging pests:
All wasps will sting if provoked or feel threatened. The most common type of wasp in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and the rest of the United States are yellowjackets followed closely by paper wasps.
Yellowjackets have distinctive gold or yellow patterning. Paper wasps tend to be more brown or reddish with thinner waists and longer legs. Yellowjacket's antennae are black, while paper wasps have yellow tipped antennae.
Bees use a waxy substance to build their nests (combs), while wasps use regurgitated wood pulp. Bee nests will have a smooth sheen to them while wasp nests tend to be gray and papery.
Connecticut has the same common types of wasps as New York: paper wasps, yellow jackets and white faced hornets.
Yes. If you see a black wasp in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, it’s likely a great black wasp. This is a variety of wasp common to much of the U.S. They prefer dry, sandy soil to burrow in.
For fast and reliable identification and elimination of Wasps in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area, contact Assured Environments.
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