Wasps are members of the same insect order (Hymenoptera) that also includes ants, bees and sawflies. Wasps can be beneficial – as they are voracious predators of certain plant-destroying insects and flies – but some wasps also are stinging insects, and when they, or their nests, are disturbed, that ability to sting repeatedly makes them dangerous (unlike bees, which sting once and then die). Some wasp species, like yellowjackets, hornets and paper wasps, are social insects that live in colonies in the way that ants, bees and termites do; others, like mud daubers, are solitary and do not live in colonies.

[Animalia > Arthropoda > Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae]