Bee vs Wasp: Key Differences in Looks, Stings and Diet

Key differences at a glance

Bees and wasps are close relatives. Both belong to the insect order Hymenoptera, along with ants and sawflies, and bees evolved from hunting wasps more than 100 million years ago. Bees are essentially wasps that gave up hunting and switched to a vegetarian diet of pollen and nectar.

This comparison sets the western honey bee against the common wasp, the familiar yellowjacket of Europe, because these are the two insects people most often confuse. Thousands of other species of bees and wasps look and behave differently.

How to tell them apart by looks

Hair. Bees are covered in branched, feathery hairs that trap pollen, so they look fuzzy and often carry yellow or orange dust. Wasps have only short, sparse hairs and look smooth and shiny.

Color. Honey bees are golden-brown to dark brown with duller bands. Common wasps and other yellowjackets have sharp, bright yellow and black markings, a warning pattern that tells predators they can sting.

Shape. Both have a narrow waist between the thorax and abdomen, but in bees it is hidden by hair, so the body looks plump and rounded. Wasps have a clearly pinched “wasp waist” and a more pointed abdomen.

Legs. A foraging honey bee has broad, flattened hind legs, often carrying pellets of pollen in its pollen baskets. Wasps have slim, smooth legs. In flight, yellowjackets often let their legs dangle, while bees tuck them close to the body.

Wings. At rest, many wasps fold their wings lengthwise along the body. Bees keep theirs flat over the back.

Diet: pollen eaters versus predators

Adult bees and wasps both drink nectar for energy. The difference is what they feed their young. Bee larvae are raised on pollen, mixed with nectar or honey and, in honey bees, gland secretions from nurse bees.

Wasp larvae are carnivores. Common wasp workers hunt caterpillars, flies, aphids and many other insects, chew them into a paste and feed it to the larvae. In return, the larvae release a sugary liquid that the adults drink. In late summer, when the colony stops raising young, workers lose this sugar source and go looking for fruit, jam, sweet drinks and picnics. That is why wasps become such a nuisance at that time of year; see why wasps are more aggressive in late summer.

Nests: wax comb versus paper

Honey bees build combs of six-sided cells from beeswax, which workers produce from glands on their abdomen. The comb stores honey and pollen and houses the young, and it hangs inside a cavity such as a hollow tree or a beekeeper’s hive.

Common wasps build nests of paper. Workers scrape wood fibers from fences, dead wood and sheds, chew them with saliva and spread the pulp in thin layers. The nest has horizontal combs of cells, open at the bottom, wrapped in a gray, layered outer shell. Common wasps often nest underground in old rodent burrows, or in roof spaces and wall cavities, and a large nest at the end of summer may hold several thousand workers.

Colony life and winter

A honey bee colony lasts for years. It stores honey to survive the winter as a living cluster of thousands of bees, and it reproduces by swarming; see why bees swarm.

A common wasp colony lasts only one season. A queen starts the nest alone in spring, workers build it up through summer, and in autumn the colony produces new queens and males. The workers, males and old queen all die as the weather turns cold, and only the young mated queens survive, hibernating in sheltered spots. Nests are not reused the next year.

Which stings worse, a bee or a wasp?

Both can give a painful sting, and only females of either can sting, because the stinger is a modified egg-laying tube. The key difference is the barbs. A worker honey bee’s stinger is strongly barbed, so it usually lodges in skin, tears free and the bee dies. A wasp’s stinger is smooth, so it can sting again and again; see can a wasp sting more than once?.

Honey bees usually sting only when their nest is threatened or when they are trapped or trodden on, and foraging bees on flowers are rarely aggressive. Wasps are also defensive near their nest, but late-summer workers searching for sugar may sting more readily when people swat at them. For people who are allergic, either sting can cause a severe reaction; anyone who has trouble breathing or swelling of the face or throat after a sting should seek emergency medical help immediately by calling 911 in the US, 112 in the EU or 999 in the UK.

Bee and wasp look-alikes

Many harmless insects copy the colors of bees and wasps to fool predators. The most common are hoverflies, true flies with yellow and black stripes. They have only two wings instead of four, very large eyes, short stubby antennae and no sting, and they often hang motionless in the air before darting off.

Some bees also look like wasps. Nomad bees are almost hairless and boldly marked in yellow, red and black, and wool carder bees have bright yellow spots along the abdomen, so both are easy to mistake for small wasps. When in doubt, watch what the insect does: bees collect pollen, while wasps search leaves and fences for prey and wood.

Roles in nature: pollinators and predators

Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants and many crops. Wasps visit flowers too and do some pollination, but their bigger role is as predators. Social wasps catch huge numbers of caterpillars, flies and other insects, many of them garden and crop pests, and they scavenge dead animals.

Both have downsides where they are introduced. The common wasp has spread to New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, where it competes with native birds and insects. In North America, the yellowjackets once thought to be the common wasp have turned out to be a separate species, and several other yellowjackets live there. Larger wasps called hornets are compared in hornet vs wasp.