those yellow jackets will sting without provocation.  Carnivorous, too….seen them feeding on mice carcasses in the woods.

That’s why people complain about them at picnics and barbeques.  They come to the smell of meat.

Basically:

bright yellow stripes = wasp (or yellowjacket in USA) = AVOID
dull orange stripes = honeybee
big hairy bugger that can barely get off the ground = bumblebee

I suppose there are several varieties of bumblebee (from the smallish red-tailed ones to the giant white-tailed ones), but honestly.  I suppose they do tend to build solitary nests in soil, which can shock people when they’re gardening and suddenly a huge bee leaps out at them.

I should also add:

small hovering fly with yellow stripes and flat abdomen = hoverfly (a common non-stinging wasp-mimic in the UK)

The amount of people I’ve seen panic over a harmless hoverfly is ridiculous. They don’t even look like wasps unless you really squint.

After a while, I heard a bee buzzing against the dormer window. It was an unusually light-coloured honey-bee. I pushed the dormer open wider and it flew away. After, of course, uselessly bashing its head against the now-completely-open glass for a while longer, because “Hey! Glass! Whoooo!”.

Then I heard it again, so I guided it out again.

And again. OK, closed the dormer window, this time.

And I heard it again. It must have got in through the curtained main window, into the darkened room, then up to the main light source: the dormer. I moved it out, once more, closed both windows, and watched for it to come back. Within seconds it did, banging against the window.

Then I realised, as several of its pale friends joined it against my window, what was really happening. They, of course, were different bees. Many different bees, all so pale yellow they were almost white. The only ones I could see were the ones on my window, and those flying towards my window. None were visible on any of the flowers in the garden below me, though there were bumblebees.

Here’s what I’m guessing happened.

My window is approximately level with the railway line on the embankment that it faces. The garden between is in a sort of dip, filled with leafy trees. If a bee were flying over the railway line towards me, it might be forgiven for not noticing that the ground was dropping away: the top of the foliage remains roughly level with that railway line ad my window.

So, I suspect a bee found the delicious flowers in the garden below me, flew back to the nest, danced the directions, but only the steps for “about four feet above the ground, two hundred yards in THAT direction” without the cautionary ass-wiggle for “oh and hey watch out, the ground drops away after the railway embankment”. So, instead of hitting the flowers, a steady stream of bees hit my window.

In my experience, though, bumblebees take a lot more provocation to sting. They’ll do it for a nest, but you can touch them on flowers, and if they really mind they’ll only fly away.

That’s my experience too. My family used to keep honeybees, and I’ve been stung plenty of times (and not just when stealing their food). But you can practically pet bumble bees and they’ll just sit there.

The worst though: yellow jackets and white face hornets. They sting with no provocation at all. And, they build ground nets, which is just unfair in my opinion.

In a smackdown between a praying mantis in one corner and a Tarantula hawk in the other, where would you put your money?  I’ve read that the preying mantis can take a lot of venom, and even lose a foreleg and keep going.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis

Here is the Mac Daddy of stinging insects: The cowkiller wasp.

Pish.  The cow killer’s sting only rates a 3 on the Starr sting pain scale.  The Tarantula Hawk gets a 4.

Also, no mention of the fact that dumbledore is another word for bumblebee?

Bumbling? Honeybees: no. Bumblebees: yes.

I also <3 honey bees.

I also also <3 those little black-and-white bee-looking critters that swarm around a couple of the plants in my backyard, but disdain the other flowers – good enough for hoi polloi maybe, but not for them!

I, however, have nothing but hatred in my heart for the insidious menace that is yellow jackets.  get off my burger, you bastards! *shakes fist*

A honeybee: not so much.

I’d like to know more about the differences in behavior. The dance of the honeybee is famous, but some other colonial bees use scent markers instead. Do bumblebees do either, or do they each forage on their own? I haven’t seen a definitive answer.

http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/resources/cowkiller.shtml

That fuzzy black and yellow airship that just sputtered by loud enough to leave your left ear ringing?

That was a bumblebee. (We grow ‘em pretty big around these parts…)

In my backyard, it’s pretty obvious which ones are honey bees and which ones are bumble bees. It’s also not that important, since they’re both pretty mellow and just want the nectar, man. 

It’s the honey bee/yellow jacket identification that needs to be better, since they’re a lot closer to the same shape, and the yellow jackets are nasty. (Basically, yellow jackets are scavengers, and a more caution yellow and black, where the honey bees just like the flowers and are more honey colored.)

I like watching bees (naturally).  But when they become a bee sharp they usually end up as a bee flat.

Here is your CC licensed photogenic honeybee for next time.