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Originally Posted by Stryker
A type of bee.
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Some of us old timers were geeks before computers existed. Entomology (the study of insects) was one of my hobbies as a youngster so I must add a correction to the classification of a yellow jacket. It is not a bee but rather a wasp. There a several species of wasps with the yellow jacket being one of the most common in the US. They are often referred to as hornets but that classification is incorrect. There is only one true hornet found in the US and it is an import from Europe. Here's a couple of articles you may find interesting.
http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordL...low_jacket.htm
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/no...an/horn-yj.htm
We have these pests come back every spring and build nests under the railing of our deck on the back of the house. As one of the articles above points out, only the females can sting - and repeatedly! Some folks are allergic to bee and/or wasp poison and react as Jag describes or worse, they have died from a reaction to bee or wasp stings.
And for a final bit of useless info, the Yellow Jacket is also the mascot of
Georgia Tech.