Insects

Bees & wasps

Bees are wasps that turned vegetarian. Both belong to the same order, and bees evolved from a line of hunting wasps that began feeding their young on pollen instead of prey. That one change explains the differences you can see: a bee is hairy, because branched hairs trap pollen, and often has a flat, bristled patch on each hind leg to carry it home; a wasp is sleek and nearly bald, with a narrower waist and a body built for grabbing and stinging other insects. Bees drink nectar and gather pollen and rarely leave the flowers; wasps drink nectar too, but they are at the flowers between hunts.

Nearly all wasps are solitary and want nothing from your picnic. The sand wasps and digger wasps hunt a single kind of prey, paralyse it with a sting and bury it alive in a burrow as food for one larva, a habit that Darwin, writing about their ichneumon cousins, found hard to square with a benevolent creator.

• Bee, family Apidae Apidae
• Bumblebee Bombus impatiens
• Crabronid wasp Crabronidae
• Cuckoo wasp Chrysididae
• Eastern Carpenter Bee Xylocopa virginica
• Eastern Cicada Killer Sphecius speciosus
• European Hornet Vespa crabro
• European Paper Wasp Polistes dominula
• Gold-marked Thread-waisted Wasp Eremnophila aureonotata
• Great Black Wasp Sphex pensylvanicus
• Great Golden Digger Wasp Sphex ichneumoneus
• Honeybee Apis mellifera
• Ichneumon wasp Ichneumonidae
• Leafcutter bee Megachile sp.
• Long-horned bee Melissodes sp.
• Paper wasp Polistes sp.
• Red-banded Sand Wasp Ammophila sabulosa
• Sand wasp Bembix sp.
• Sawfly Tenthredo sp.
• Sweat bee Halictidae
• Wool Carder Bee Anthidium manicatum
• Yellow-faced bee Hylaeus sp.