Identify Bees and Wasps: Hair, Waist, Legs and Nests

To tell a bee from a wasp, look for hair first: bees are robust and hairy and always carry at least some branched hairs, while wasps are slender, smooth and have none (Pollinator Partnership). Then confirm with the rest:

• Hair. Pollinator Partnership says bees always have at least a few branched hairs, like tiny feathers, and wasps have none. You may need a close-up photo to see them.
• Waist. Wasps usually have a narrow, pinched waist between thorax and abdomen. Bees look rounder (Mass Audubon).
• Legs. Bees have flattened hind legs, and honey bees carry pollen in baskets on them (Mass Audubon; University of Minnesota). Paper wasps fly with long legs dangling beneath them (University of Minnesota Extension).
• Pollen. Bees collect pollen on leg hairs or on the underside of the abdomen; wasps collect no pollen (University of Minnesota bee guide).
• Where it is feeding. Bees work flowers. Yellow jackets come to your meat, soda and garbage; honey bees usually are not attracted to food (UC IPM).

Colour alone is a poor guide: many bees, wasps and flies share black and yellow.

Sizes below are from the University of Minnesota bee guide unless noted.

• Honey bee: black with golden hairs, 10 to 15 mm; social, with wax comb. Colonies can reach as many as 40,000 workers (Pollinator Partnership).
• Bumble bee: stout, furry and completely hairy, 10 to 23 mm, usually black and yellow or orange. About 250 species worldwide and about 47 in the United States (Pollinator Partnership).
• Carpenter bee: large, 13 to 30 mm, chewing tunnels in wood. Mass Audubon notes it looks like a bumble bee but has a completely black, shiny, hairless abdomen.
• Sweat bees: small, 2 to 6 mm, some metallic; nest in the ground.
• Mining bees: ground nesters with small depressions on the face between the eyes.
• Mason and leafcutter bees: mason bees are often blue or metallic and use mud; leafcutter bees line nests with leaves, petals, resin and mud.
• Cuckoo bees: about 10 percent of the world's roughly 20,000 bee species; they have sparse, flattened hairs, and Pollinator Partnership says most people mistake them for wasps.

For a deeper bee guide, see bee identification.

• Yellow jackets: 3/8 to 5/8 inch, bright yellow with black lines, spots, triangles or diamonds (University of Minnesota Extension). See yellow jacket identification.
• Bald-faced hornet: about 7/8 inch, black with white to cream markings on the face and at the tip of the abdomen (UMN).
• European hornet: up to 1.5 inches, brown with yellow markings (Mass Audubon).
• Paper wasps: slender, 1/2 to 1 inch, long legs dangling in flight, usually brown with yellowish markings (UMN).
• Mud daubers and cicada killers: solitary hunting wasps (University of Minnesota bee guide). Cicada killers can grow up to 2 inches (Mass Audubon).
• Parasitoid wasps: ichneumonids, braconids and others that lay eggs in or on other insects and build no nest; tiphiid wasps, 11 to 18 mm, attack beetle larvae including Japanese beetle grubs (University of Minnesota bee guide).
• Velvet ants: hairy, wingless female wasps; the red species called the cow killer has an extremely painful sting (Garden Betty).

• Cuckoo bees look like wasps. Their hair is sparse and flattened, so most people take them for wasps, but under magnification they still have branched hairs (Pollinator Partnership).
• Carpenter bees look like bumble bees, except for the shiny, hairless black abdomen (Mass Audubon).
• Hover flies look like both. These harmless flies copy the yellow and black of bees and wasps. Check the wings and antennae: flies have one pair of working wings and short antennae, and cannot sting (Wikipedia).
• European paper wasps look like yellow jackets, but fly with long legs dangling (UMN).

A photo that shows the wings, antennae and hind legs settles most of these.

Social wasps. The University of Minnesota bee guide says most bees, social or solitary, are not aggressive and that bumble bees are docile, while the majority of social wasps people meet can be aggressive. Within the wasps there are big differences:

• Yellow jackets and European hornets aggressively defend their nests (Mass Audubon), and yellow jackets may sting unprovoked in late summer and fall (UMN).
• Paper wasps are calmer than yellow jackets (Mass Audubon); UC IPM says they rarely sting humans.
• Carpenter bees rarely sting (Mass Audubon).

Only females can sting, in bees and wasps alike (Pollinator Partnership). Anyone with a known allergy to stings should keep away from nests; see bee and wasp stings.

University of Minnesota Extension points out that the rusty-patched bumble bee is listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act, and that without a permit it is illegal to harass, harm, kill, trap, capture or collect it. For honey bee swarms, UMN suggests an experienced beekeeper may be willing to collect and relocate them. Identify the insect before treating any nest.

InsectLens names bees, wasps and their fly mimics from a photo. For a reliable result, photograph the insect while it rests on a flower or wall, from above and from the side, so the hair, waist, wings and legs are all visible. For insects that are hard to name, the iNaturalist community forum is a place to ask volunteer specialists.

Research and drafting for this page used AI assistance. Every figure, date and quotation was then checked line by line against the sources listed at the bottom of the page, each of which was opened while writing. Nothing here is a diagnosis. If a bite, sting or contact with an insect is followed by trouble breathing, swelling of the face or throat, spreading redness, fever or any symptom that worries you, get medical care; in the United States Poison Help (1-800-222-1222) is free and open 24 hours a day.