Differences between a bumblebee and a bee and a wasp

If you go out into a clearing, you can meet insects that people encounter quite often - bumblebees, wasps and bees. They are so different from each other that it is simply impossible to confuse them. The differences between a bumblebee and a bee and a wasp are in their size and color. Most often, humans come into contact with wasps and bees, but bumblebees are much less likely to be seen, although they have a more massive body. Despite this, there are species that are even smaller in size than the bee, although bees are different.

Their similarities

All three species of insects belong to the same family Hymenoptera. These are social insects that build nests and live in families where there is a strict division of responsibilities. The family consists of female queens, male workers, and drones, who are kicked out of the family by the female workers after the queen is impregnated. The family defends its nests with all available forces.

Bees and bumblebees belong to the genus of true bees, so they can make honey. Bumblebees collect better quality honey, but not in the same quantities as bees and do not store it for as long. Bumblebees and bees are unique in that they pollinate a variety of plants to ensure good harvests.

Wasps and bumblebees have a smooth sting, which people use many times to protect themselves from enemies. But in bees it is not smooth, therefore, having bitten a person, he cannot remove him from the person’s body and he dies.

These are almost all similarities as they only reflect differences.

How can you distinguish

The color of wasps is much brighter and more contrasting than that of bees.
What a bee looks like

Despite the fact that the appearance of these insects is almost identical, there are several features that allow you to distinguish them:

The color of wasps is much brighter and more contrasting than that of bees. Rich yellow stripes give way to sharp blacks. Bees have softer and smoother color transitions. Also, some individuals have inclusions of white and brown colors.
Bees carry pollen, thereby pollinating flowers. Therefore, their body is covered with fluff, so the pollen sticks better. Wasps have a smooth body and a glossy abdomen.
The shape of the wasps is elongated, they are thinner. Bees are round and plump.
There are always clumps of pollen on bee feet.
A bee's nest consists of wax honeycombs, a wasp's nest is made of clay and plant remains.
Insects can also be distinguished by the area in which they are found. If this is an apiary or a flower meadow, then with a high probability there is a bee; if this is a city market, a landfill, or a park area within the city, then with a high probability it could be a wasp.

What is the difference between a bite

These insects belong to the same class - Stinging insects. The weapon of attack, the sting, is physiologically a transformable ovipositor. Accordingly, only females attack. What is the difference between a bee sting and a wasp sting?

The presence of a sting in the wound. This is the main difference - the bee's stinger has characteristic saw-like serrations. The pointed shape makes it easy to penetrate the skin. After this, the bee makes a jerk in the opposite direction, but the notches do not allow it to come out. The sting comes off the bee along with part of the abdomen, pulsates in the human body, releasing poison. The bee flies away and dies within a few minutes. The wasp's sting is smooth and sharp, like a needle. It easily penetrates and is extracted from the skin. Therefore, in one attack, a wasp can sting 5 or more times, then fly away freely.
Instant reaction of the body. The difference is that wasp venom is more toxic. Therefore, after its bite, a local manifestation of allergy immediately occurs. In addition, due to the wasps feeding on sewage, infection is possible. After a bee sting, allergies can only occur if there is individual intolerance. As a rule, the pain goes away immediately after the sting is removed.
Bee venom contains an acid that can be neutralized with alkali. For example, wash the bite site with soap.

There are a number of signs by which you can easily determine which insect is flying around: a hornet, a wasp or a bee.

The first sign is hairiness, which is distributed among insects in the following order:

First place goes to the hornet.
In second place is the bee.
Third place goes to the wasp.

If the hornet and the wasp are the same size, they can easily be confused by color, but in any case the wasp’s body will be “bald.” Bees occupy an intermediate position in terms of hairiness, so to those who do not understand this, it may seem that the body of a bee is also devoid of hairiness. In fact, if you look closely, his body is covered in stubble, but it is not that long, so it is not too noticeable.

External differences

It must be said that from a certain distance it is not always possible to say with certainty what kind of insect is flying, a bee or a wasp.
Still, both species (and in this review we will consider and compare exactly the species, using the example of the common wasp and the honey bee) belong to the same order of Hymenoptera, and naturally, they cannot differ in the same way that a grasshopper differs from a butterfly. Stinging insects.

But, in fact, these two types of insects actually have much more different than they have in common. And this statement concerns both their essence and lifestyle, as well as external characteristics.

So, how do wasps differ from bees in appearance?

Let's list the main differences, and these include:

body shape;
thickness of the transition between the thoracic segment and abdomen;
presence/absence of insect body hair;
paw thickness;
body painting.

Now let's explain each of the listed points.

Perhaps one of the main characteristics of all wasps, which distinguishes these insects from others, is their so-called “waist”, comparison with which has long become a catchphrase. Indeed, in the structure of its body, the predator has a very narrow transition from the thoracic section to the abdomen.

Also, a bee is distinguished from a wasp by the presence of very noticeable thick hair, especially on the thoracic segment of the body. The wasp, on the contrary, does not have visible hairs on its body, its body is smooth.

Bees have fleshier, so to speak, black legs. Wasps' limbs are usually yellow, and they are also longer and thinner than those of a bee.

And finally, both types of insects have very different body colors, especially coloring is a characteristic distinguishing feature of the wasp. If you look very closely at representatives of both species, it is impossible not to recognize the striped predator.

Its bright black and yellow color, together with the predatory expression of its “face,” reveals in it a stinging killer much more clearly than one can identify in the calmer and more comfortable appearance of a bee, a stinging hymenoptera insect that is also capable of standing up for itself.

Despite the fact that both species have a gnawing-licking mouthparts, the wasp still has much more impressive mandibles, which emphasizes the aggressiveness of the species and its focus on fighting and attacking.

Coloring

Insects have so many color options that it is not difficult to distinguish between a hornet, a wasp and a bee. The bee is distinguished by dark brown shades.

There is a certain stereotype in cartoons, which is why honey collectors are drawn with stripes. If you look closely at the images of insects, their difference immediately catches your eye.

Bumblebees and wasps can have completely uniform colors, including stripes. There are shiny wasps that differ in the colors of the rainbow, and, for example, typhias are painted in a solid black color.

However, most people believe that wasps have an exclusively classic color with a predominance of yellow and black stripes. It should be noted that members of other families who do not have a similar coloration can be dangerous and can bite just as painfully.

Wasp giants

The danger increases if a person or animal is attacked by a hornet, the largest species of the aspen family. In temperate climates, the worker reaches 25 mm, and the queen reaches 35 mm.

Nests can be found near human habitation under the roofs of houses or barns. They are 100% predators, feed on other arthropods and feed the larvae with them.

They also include fruit juice in their diet, and do not ignore honey. For this reason, adult individuals cause great damage to apiaries, destroying their workers and robbing the hives

The severe consequences of injecting poison are explained not by its quantity, but by increased allergenicity

Only females are equipped with a three-millimeter sting, which can sting repeatedly. The poison contains histamines, toxins, the substance acetylcholine and other components that cause irritation of nerve fibers, palpitations and severe pain. An allergic reaction in this case is accompanied by severe swelling and can have unpredictable consequences. They are found much less frequently than the same vespids, and are less aggressive, they do not attack first. However, such a neighborhood in a country house or dacha is highly undesirable - an accidentally disturbed nest can turn into a tragedy. There is nothing useless in living nature - every species, including predatory ones, occupies a necessary ecological niche. And yet, if a wasp colony, and even more so a hornet colony, is found near human habitation, all measures must be taken to get rid of it.

Body measurements

In nature, there are species whose body lengths are almost the same, so using this criterion it can be difficult to distinguish who is who. Despite this, overall body size and structure may indicate which one you are talking about. This is another sign of how to distinguish these insects.

Despite the length of the body, the Bombus species always looks more massive than the graceful bees and wasps.

Certain blood types sting people more often

Those who smell good to mosquitoes and bumblebees are often stung. Mosquitoes are first attracted to components of human sweat. It's not just sweat, breath, or more specifically carbon dioxide that can attract mosquitoes to spy on their victims. Other odors that attract them are lactic acid, uric acid, body heat and ammonia.

This explains, for example, why athletes are more likely to be stung than other people, because they produce significantly more lactic acid during exercise. The composition of bacteria on the skin also plays an important role. Blood type 0

is the most popular according to tests by the Institute of Pest Control Technology.

Diet

This factor quite seriously influences the determination of differences between insects. Bumblebees and bees, which constitute the true bee family, are distinguished by the fact that they are exclusively vegetarian.

As a rule, they feed on pollen, nectar and honey, which is not the case with wasps. These insects are omnivores and tend to be predators that may also feed on carrion.

These insects also have significant differences in their lifestyle. Bees, for example, stock up on supplies for the winter and hibernate as a family. Bumblebees do not stay for the winter and use honey to feed their larvae. All working individuals die with the onset of cold weather, and only the queen remains for the winter. As for wasps, their diet is very varied.

Wasps eat:

Ripe fruit.
They love all kinds of sweets.
They catch insects.
Don't give in to fall.

Wasps feed the larvae protein foods. To do this, workers catch various insects, and in the city they find various pieces of meat, including dead animals.

However, reservations are not made for the winter, since the entire family dies in the fall, with the exception of the queen.

The extraordinary life of bees and wasps

What do they eat?

Bumblebees, bees and many species of wasps lead a social lifestyle. However, bumblebees act alone in search of food. They feed mainly on flower nectar and pollen. When the air has not yet warmed up enough, the bumblebee, quickly contracting its chest muscles, is able to warm up its body to the required 40 °C. This interesting ability allows them to fly out earlier than their “competitors” and collect the first nectar.

Bees fly around to form a small group and collect nectar and pollen from flowering plants. Wasps fly in flocks of 2-3 dozen individuals and prefer to feed on animal food (small insects). The victim is divided into pieces and taken to the hive to feed the larvae. Often the wasps kill the bees and take the honey.

Formation of nests

Royal bees and their colonies build nests in the hive or elsewhere if a ready-made hive is not available. Their nests consist of honeycombs of regular shape, in contrast to the nest itself, which can be arbitrary. The shape of the nest depends on the shape of the cavity in which the bees build the nest.

As for wasps, they independently build nests in any suitable place. As a rule, wasp colonies are not as numerous as bee colonies, so their nests are not very large.

Basically, wasp nests are found in the form of an elongated top or in the form of a curved plate of irregular shape. If you look at this dish, it looks like a sunflower, but without the seeds.

A nest with an elongated tip may also belong to hornets.

Wasps build their nests from cellulose glued together with saliva. If you take the nest in your hand, it resembles an object glued together from thick cardboard.

External differences

The difference in size and body structure is significant.

Wasps

Visually, the appearance of the wasp is elongated and thin. The abdomen and chest are connected by a jumper, thanks to which the concept of a “wasp waist” arose among the people. The body is smooth, slightly lowered in the area of the abdomen and head. The head and front of the chest are black. The abdomen has a bright, contrasting color - wide black and yellow stripes. The wings are thin, transparent, and there are small antennae on the head.

Another difference between a wasp and a bee is the size and structure of the sting. Wasps have oblong weapons, without serrations. Reminds me of a needle. Thanks to this feature, it easily penetrates the skin and is freely removed. During one act of attack, the insect stings up to 5 times. Thanks to this feature, you can identify the attacker and recognize the enemy. A wasp can not only sting, but also bite. If the chitinous cover of an insect is too dense, it pierces with powerful jaws.

Bee and wasp

Bees

They look different in appearance, there are similarities in coloring and coloring. They have a round shape. A noticeable difference between a wasp and a bee is its thin, elongated limbs. They have massive black legs, covered with numerous small hairs. The body size is about 1 cm. The jaws are small, antennae and large eyes are clearly visible on the head.

The head is small yellow-black. The abdomen is shaggy - covered with relatively long dense hairs. The abdomen is striped. Unlike wasp representatives, the stripes are narrow, alternating black and bright orange. The top is covered with yellow fibers. Photos of the differences between a bee and a wasp can be seen below.

You can compare a bee and a wasp by their sting, which differs significantly. Bees' defense weapons consist of barbs. Reminds me of a saw. It pierces the skin and is firmly fixed. The notches do not allow the bee to get the sting back; with a sharp jerk, part of the abdomen comes off, and soon the bee dies. Below is a photo of a bee and a wasp in the process of stinging.

Bumblebee

Fluffy creature. The appearance of this insect does not even cause concern. This is a slow, calm creature. The body is much larger, more massive, stockier than bees and wasps. Outwardly it resembles a furry ball. The stripes are yellow-black, wide. The head is lowered to the bottom. Some types of bumblebees are completely black or have bright reddish stripes.

Bee, bumblebee and wasp

A close-up photo of a wasp and a bee can be seen below.

Stings

A one-time bee sting if it stings a person. Due to the presence of shavings, he cannot remove them from human skin. Once stung, the bee dies, but if it stings another creature, it may survive. The bee can be aggressive if you wave your arms a lot.

As for wasps and bumblebees, they have multiple bites and can bite a person more than once. In this case, the wasp may just bite if it doesn’t like something. The most harmless creature in this sense is the hornet. You have to try really hard to get him to bite.

Nature of the bites

The wasp stings are much more painful, but the nature of the bites has its own similarities.

As mentioned above, wasps can sting several times. At the same time, there is a risk of infection, since wasps often visit places where there is complete unsanitary conditions. As for the bee, the sting is not so dangerous, since the only thing bees do is collect nectar from flowers - honey plants.

Every person should be able to provide first aid for wasp and bee stings. Ignorance of these rules, as well as illiterate actions, can harm human health. This is especially true for people prone to allergies, young children, expectant mothers and people with poor health.

As a result of a bee or wasp sting, the following characteristic signs appear:

Swelling of the bite site.
Redness.
Severe throbbing pain.
Deterioration in health.

In cases where the human body is hypersensitive, the reaction may be as follows:

The swelling increases, the tissues of the larynx, tongue and facial area swell.
Breathing problems appear: attacks of suffocation are possible.
The heart begins to beat much faster.
Redness spreads over a significantly larger area of the body.
There may be an increase in body temperature or cold sweat.
The person develops a feeling of anxiety.

Anaphylactic reactions occur if the degree of intoxication of the body is more severe:

The man loses consciousness.
Hemorrhages in the eye area.
The person's skin becomes pale.
The pulse is barely palpable or is 100 beats per minute, or even more.
The pressure is either high or low.
Trouble breathing, the victim can barely breathe.
Tachycardia develops.
Painful sensations appear in the abdomen and breasts.
The wound is very itchy.
Nausea and dizziness may occur.

Behavior

The hornet is different in that it prefers to fly away, and if disturbed, it will simply fly away and that’s it.

A bee, even if alone, can wrap itself around an object. Find out how dangerous this item is for her. However, it is unlikely to bite except by waving its arms. Bees will attack in any case if they disturb the peace of the colony or hive.

The wasp is considered the most annoying insect and is capable of biting in the most harmless situations. Additionally, a wasp sting is characterized by acute and severe pain.

Lifestyle, main functions

The behavior of a fertile female and the lifestyle of different species of the wasp family differ, but the main mission - prolongation of the genus - remains the same.

Single queens

They are active in early spring – the mating season begins. Eggs begin to be laid in summer. Before this, they live for their own pleasure - collecting nectar from plants, drinking juices of fruits and berries. They do not form multi-tiered nests; they dig holes in the ground for laying eggs.

The queen prepares the nest in light, easy-to-digging soil. The depth reaches 5 cm; a single cell is located at the bottom.

The female paralyzes the larvae of large beetles, spiders, and various insects, drags them into a hole, and lays an egg on the body. After a few days, a larva appears and devours the victim within 14 days.

In this way, the queen provides the larva with separate housing and food. At the end of the cycle, pupation occurs. In the pupal state, the larva overwinters; in the spring, young females and males independently emerge to the surface, and the mating process begins.

Public vespins

The Wasp Queen is the founder of a large family, within which there is a clear hierarchy. The majority of the society consists of working individuals - immature females. They build a nest, provide protection, look for food, and feed the larvae.

Queen wasp of public vespins

The young queen lays the foundation of a nest in a favorable location. Initially forms a leg, then lays out the honeycomb. An egg is laid in each cell. After 3-4 days, sedentary larvae appear, which need to be fed for 2 weeks. The queen hunts spiders and insects, since the cubs require protein food. Chews, forms balls, gives to larvae.

At the end of the cycle, the larva pupates, after 2-3 days a working individual appears, to which the queen entrusts all responsibilities for building the nest, searching for food, and caring for the larvae. She herself becomes the queen of the family, only laying eggs.

In August, large honeycombs are built near the nest, where special eggs are placed. From them a generation of young sexually mature females and males appears. They live in the nest for some time, come out in the fall, and mating occurs. With the onset of cold weather, working individuals die, females find refuge in wood for wintering.

According to some sources, the former queen dies in November, according to others, she hides and spends the winter. Forms a new family in the spring and has the ability to return to its original places. From here the queen's life expectancy is calculated from 1 to 2 years.

Paper sheets

They occupy an intermediate place between primitive solitary wasps and social vespins. There may be several mature queens in one nest, but only one plays the role of queen. The rest help her increase the population size. The number of hives reaches several hundred individuals. Otherwise, the functions of the uterus are identical to vespins.

Paper wasp queen

In nature, there are many species, subspecies, and genera of wasps. Among them there are predatory queens or parasites that sneak into someone else's nest, kill the true queen, and take her place. The enslaved family cares for the larvae of the new queen, feeding her herself. Over time, only her offspring remain in the hive.

If these insects suddenly disappear

Currently, environmentalists are sounding the alarm due to the fact that the number of colonies of bumblebees and bees is significantly declining. If wasps disappear, hardly anyone will think about it, even if wasps cannot be considered completely useless insects.

If bees and bumblebees disappear, humanity will face real famine, since there will be no one to pollinate crops, and humans themselves will not be able to cope with this difficult task. Scientists and they do not know what can be done at the moment to replenish the number of these families.

Housing

Bee families are much larger than bumblebees; they usually build their nests inside tree hollows; domestic representatives live in hives. It is worth saying that they try to build honeycombs of the most correct shape possible.

Bumblebee colonies often settle underground, in litter. They can choose abandoned rodent burrows and bird nests built in bushes as their shelter. The shelter cells of bumblebees are not characterized by orderliness and symmetry, as in the situation with honeycombs.

Interesting Facts

These insects are interesting because:

After the bees fertilize the queen with males, they attack them and drive them away from the colony. After this, they quickly die, since they cannot provide food on their own.
Wasps can also make honey, but no one has seen this. At the bottom of the cell there is a microscopic volume of honey. The larvae need to eat something first. Then they move on to eating protein foods.
Bumblebees appear on the inflorescences earlier than anyone else and begin to pollinate plants before anyone else.
The hornet is a true predator that prefers to feed on live insects.
A worker bee can transmit information to its relatives about where the food product is located.

Each insect has its own pros and cons. Unfortunately, many people unjustifiably destroy insects, although there are no absolutely useless living creatures in nature. If some species disappear, humanity simply will not be able to survive.

Nest organization

Almost all types of hornets live in families, building nests. As a material for construction, they prefer rotten wood or thin bark (mostly birch), which they chew, mix with saliva, and from the resulting mass they sculpt nest walls and honeycombs. As a result, the hornet's nest looks as if it is made of cardboard or corrugated paper. This shell reliably protects the “tenants” from drafts, heat and cold weather.

Hornets can attach their nests to the ceiling, build them in a hole or hollow tree, hives abandoned by bees or old birdhouses. Preferred places to build nests are near apiaries, gardens and vegetable gardens.

The beginning of construction is laid by the womb: it is she who is the founder of the future home of the family and its main mistress. After wintering, she looks for a suitable place, makes several hundred on the basis of the future home, where she lays the first eggs. After some time, the first young workers appear and immediately begin to continue building the nest.

The nest is usually built from top to bottom, with a gradual increase in the number of tiers of honeycombs. The more such tiers, the more individuals can live in such a nest (it happens that there are up to 500 of the latter).

The hatched larvae are fed by adults with insects (flies, locusts, grasshoppers, beetles, bees and small wasps) chewed and mixed with saliva. They themselves feed on the juice of fruits or berries, sweet secretions of aphids, nectar and other foods containing sugar.

Hornets never return to their original home the next year. Every spring the female looks for a new place to build a nest.

These insects attack domestic bees, which is why beekeepers really dislike them.

Habitat

Domestic bees live in hives that humans build for them. Wasps are wild representatives, so they build their homes in trees, often in hollows. Bumblebees love more secluded places, one might say hidden from others, so they can choose an area in the ground to build a nest; less often, their houses are found in tree trunks and birdhouses. All representatives are found in different areas, this could be a forest, a summer cottage, a city park, or botanical gardens.

Hornets choose a variety of places to build nests; these can be the eaves of buildings, tree branches, hollows, or cracks in rocks. But wasps can make their home absolutely anywhere, on the branches of a bush, in the attic, in the stem of a plant, etc. The building material is tree bark, which they moisten with saliva, and it becomes soft; the nests they build look like thick paper.

Video “Professor Pochemushkin: why do bees need honey? »

An airfield is a device used by beekeepers when shaking out bees. Helps bees enter the hive from the ground
Bribe - the amount of honey brought by bees in 1 day
Foundation is a thin sheet of wax inserted into a frame by the beekeeper to make it easier for bees to build honeycombs. “Foundation” of future sushi
Smoker - a device used to pacify bees with smoke
Zabrus - honey mixed with wax comb caps, subject to further processing
Winter club is the state of a bee colony during winter, when the bees do not sleep, but are in a less mobile state, huddled together, maintaining vitality and warmth.
A deck (also known as a beehive) is a hive used in ancient times to keep bees. It is a hollow tree trunk
The magazine is the body of the hive, which is placed on top. Bees fill it exclusively with honey.
Honey extractor is a device for pumping out honey. Thanks to centrifugal force, honey is pumped out of the honeycombs
Honey harvest is the period when bees collect honey. It can be main, supporting, etc. The main one is when the bees bring the most bribes (honey)
Nucleus is a small hive that serves to contain a certain number of bees and a young queen until she is fertilized. Used in mother breeding
Pollen is a collection of pollen collected by a bee on its hind legs.
PZhVM - a waste product of the wax moth
Signet is a method of covering honeycombs by bees. It varies among different breeds, it can be wet and dry depending on whether the honey touches the wax caps or not.
A bee colony is a structural unit of bee society. Honey bees live only in families. Colony includes worker bees, drones and only one queen
Pollen is a collection of pollen grains from seed plants.
Pollen collector (pollen collector) - a device for collecting pollen from honey bees
PP - dividing grid, serves to limit the movement of the uterus through the housings and magazines
Swinging is a slang. The period when the beekeeper pumps out honey from the frames
Printout - removing wax caps from honeycomb cells to extract honey in centrifuges-honey extractors
Brood - eggs, open or covered with wax caps of the larvae of worker bees and drones
Sushi - a frame with lined honeycombs. The name comes from the fact that the frames are usually dried indoors after transferring honey.
SCM - silent queen change - the natural replacement of an old queen by a new one by bees, which occurs without swarming,
A drone is a male insect whose vital task is to fertilize a young uterus.
Street - the distance between 2 frames. The concept is used when buying and selling frame bee packages or hives, when indicating how many streets are occupied by bees. There are always 1 fewer frames in a package than streets

Differences between a bumblebee and a bee in the intensity of the bite and the consequences of the attack

Their similarities

How can you distinguish