The yellow jacket is about a half inch long and has a pattern of alternating black and yellow bands. The layers of skin on yellow jackets overlap in the corners. Yellow jackets have six jointed legs.	Yellow Jackets have very slim waists.	Yellow Jackets have two compound eyes.

Only female yellow jackets have stingers. This is because males need to mate.	Anatomy of a Yellow Jacket	The wings are almost see-through.

Yellow jackets are considered extremely beneficial around home gardens and vegatables and fruits that are comercially grown

at certain times of the year because they feed on insects that are sometimes harmful to plants.

Identification:

The yellow jacket worker is about one half inch long and has a pattern of alternating yellow and black bands all over their body. Yellow jackets that are foragers (a.k.a. foraging yellow jackets) are sometimes mistaken for honey bees because that look somewhat the same and like to visit the same food sources. Honey bees are a bit larger and are kind of fuzzy. Yellow jackets have no hair on them. Foraging honey bees have pollen baskets which are sometimes loaded with lots of tiny yellow or green pollen balls. Yellow jackets have smooth stingers which make it possible for them to sting multiple times while honey bees have barbed stingers, which hurt a bit more and can only sting once. Once a honey bee stings, its stinger is pulled out and the honey bee dies.

Food:

Yellow jackets like to eat foods that are rich in sugars and salts such as nectar and fruit. Foraging yellow jackets also search for meat that is high in protein such as other insects and fish, which they only chew and prepare to give to their larval members of the colony. In exchange for the pre-chewed protein, the larvae produce a sugary substance which the adults eat. The exchange between the larvae and adults is called trophallaxis (trah-fuhl-axe-iss).

Life Cycle:

The queen builds a paper nest and lays several adult workers. This first generation of workers participate in nest expansion. Nests are constructed out of several layers of comb made by lots of little pieces of wood fiber chewed into a paper-like pulp. During the peak population period, the colony produces reproductive cells that mature into future queens and reproductive males that later leave the nest for mating flights. Queens that have mated drop to the ground and seek a protected place to stay, such as a brush pile, a hollow tree, or a building. Males that have successfully mated quickly die. During the fall, the adults and foundress queen die because of the cold weather. The next spring, the life cycle begins again. Sometimes during the fall, when the adults in the colony die, skunks and bears dig into the underground nests and feed on the little, not yet mature yellow jackets. Above ground nests sometimes persist in dry areas, but are not usually used again the next spring.