WHY ITS IMPORTANT TO IDENTIFY YOUR BEES OR WASPS: The identity of your bees or wasps is critical in helping us determine how much work is involved in removing them. This factors greatly in the price of the abatement as some removals are very simple and straigtforward while others are extremely labor intensive. The other important factor is whether or not you are dealing with a social or a solitary species of insect. Social insects live together communally in one hive and they have one queen. Insects that fall into the social category are Honey bees, bumble bees, Yellow Jackets, Paper Wasps, and Hornets. They are typically easier to abate than solitary insects which live like hermits by themselves and since their is no queen each and every female is fertile and capable of reproducing and continuing to perpetuate your problem. These are like little Al Queda terrorist cells and which make them more challenging to give you complete resolution. Insects that fall into the solitary category include: Carpenter Bees, Mason Bees, Cicada Killers, and Ground/Digger Bees.
PLEASE NOTE: If you aren't comfortable getting close enough to identify your own bees or wasps then we will happily come out and identify them for you. We do charge for the inspection but apply 100% of that towards your abatement. In other words, as long as you use us to fix the problem then the inspection is free and you only pay the cost of the actual abatement. We always recomment caution when dealing with any bees or wasps as stings are painful at best and potentially lethal at worst.
First of all, if you have found your way to our website you either have bees or wasps. The easiest way to tell the difference is to look at the color of the legs. Wasps generally have legs with yellow or orange coloration and bees generally have legs that are uniformly black from the tip of their toes all the way up to their bodies. We will start with pictures of wasps and then move on to bees so skip down if your insects have black legs.
WASPS:
YELLOW JACKETS (There are 17 subspecies of these in NY)
Yellow jackets are usually about 1/2 to 3/4 of a inch and have alternating yellow and black markings on their abdomen. These are easily distinguishable from honey bees by the yellow coloration of their legs, as honey bee legs are consistently dark brown to black. In addition, yellow jackets have no hair or "peach fuzz" on their body and they appear glossy when viewed up close. These insects are very aggressive in defending themselves or their nest. Their stinger is not barbed, so they can sting repeatedly. Like honey bees, yellow jackets can be found nesting inside structures such as soffit, walls, ceilings, etc. If not dealt with early on, yellow jackets are perfectly capable of eating through your sheet rock and coming into your home.Yellow jackets are by far, the most common insect we find when called in to do a bee removal. The cost for removing these will be cheaper than honey bees since their nests are smaller but more expensive than bald faced hornets. On a scale of 1-10 of bee removal bad luck...... yellow jackets are a 5. An interesting fact about yellow jackets that many people don't know is that they make no honey. They actually have a hankering for bacon, fish, and hot dogs. They will feed this protein to their larvae which in turn, excrete a sugary solution that the adults will eat.
EASTERN YELLOW JACKET (Wasp - Pictured above)
This Eastern Yellow Jacket can be distinguished from other yellow jackets by the wide arrow shape at the top of its abdomen. Eastern Yellow jackets possess all of the typical yellow jacket physical characteristics, such as a half-inch long stout body, yellow and black coloration, yellow legs and black antennae.
This Eastern Yellow Jacket can be distinguished from other yellow jackets by the wide arrow shape at the top of its abdomen. Eastern Yellow jackets possess all of the typical yellow jacket physical characteristics, such as a half-inch long stout body, yellow and black coloration, yellow legs and black antennae.
NORTHEASTERN YELLOW JACKET (Wasp - Pictured Above)
Like some Forest Yellow Jackets, the Northeastern Yellow jacket is most easily recognized by the thick black band across the upper portion of its abdomen. It apparently nests underground in disturbed areas, and colonies are small, with less than 400 workers.. This species is often called a ground hornet, most likely due to its larger than average size -- roughly 5/8 inch long.
TRANSITION HYBRID YELLOW JACKET (Wasp - Pictured Above)
If insects could experience human emotions, they would probably have an identity crisis. This species (sometimes called a hybrid Yellow jacket) is so named because it's thought to be a cross between the Eastern and German Yellow Jacket, and possibly related to the Common and Western Yellow Jacket. The body has yellowish hairs. Nests are subterranean, and worker populations may be over 1000. Workers are scavengers, so they may pose a problem to people eating outside late in the summer. Like these other species, Transition Yellow jackets have yellow and black coloration and a stout body, and are roughly 1/2 inch in length.
If insects could experience human emotions, they would probably have an identity crisis. This species (sometimes called a hybrid Yellow jacket) is so named because it's thought to be a cross between the Eastern and German Yellow Jacket, and possibly related to the Common and Western Yellow Jacket. The body has yellowish hairs. Nests are subterranean, and worker populations may be over 1000. Workers are scavengers, so they may pose a problem to people eating outside late in the summer. Like these other species, Transition Yellow jackets have yellow and black coloration and a stout body, and are roughly 1/2 inch in length.
COMMON YELLOW JACKETS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
As its name suggests, the Common Yellow jacket possesses all the most common features of yellow jackets: stout body, roughly 1/2 inch in length, yellow and black coloration, yellow legs and black antennae.
AERIAL YELLOW JACKETS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
Aerial Yellow jackets are typically not "picnic pests", but may be attracted to sugary foods such as fruit and soft drinks. They also have been known to follow humans around, though not with the intent to sting. This species will forage for only live prey such as grasshoppers, spittle bug adults, leaf hoppers, tree crickets, flies and spiders. A very common yellowjacket, nests are usually constructed in sheltered spots above ground. They only feed on live prey, and are not quite the nuisance that other yellowjackets pose late in the summer.
FOREST YELLOW JACKETS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
This species is known to have three different marking patterns. Many will resemble the Northeastern Yellow jacket with a solid black band across the upper portion of the abdomen. The majority, however, will have two yellow or brown spots on this black band. Most rarely observed are the specimens without the black band and more yellow coloration on the abdomen. Their stout bodies measure roughly a half-inch in length like most other yellow jacket species.
GERMAN YELLOW JACKETS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
A European species, German Yellow Jackets have spread across The United States. Colonies tend to be found in voids between walls of homes, and as a result, colonies produce new queens and workers into the fall months. Nests have been found to have over 10,000 cells! Adults are scavengers and are well-known for being attracted to sweets and meats, and are a common urban nuisance. Introduced to the U.S. from Europe, the German Yellow jacket is found primarily in the Northeast. This species is rapidly expanding and now found in limited areas in the Western states of Washington and California. Like most yellow jackets, the German Yellow jacket is roughly a half-inch long with yellow and black coloration. It possesses an arrow shape at the top of the abdomen, much like the Eastern or Transition Yellow Jacket, but this marking on the German Yellow jacket is usually narrower than that of other species.
BLACK JACKETS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
Unique to most species of yellow jackets, Black jackets have a black and white coloration. The queens are often confused with Bald-faced Hornets due to their larger size and similar coloration. The difference is that Black jackets have a white band across the upper abdomen. Workers of this species can also be distinguished from the Bald-faced Hornet by their smaller size. As with most other yellow jacket species, the Black jacket's stout body measures roughly one-half inch in length. This small black and white yellowjacket is a boreal species with subterranean nests. Colonies are small, with less than 100 workers per colony. It is found in forested areas.
NOTE: These are very uncommon and in any given year we may only remove one or two hives of black jackets. MUCH more common are Bald Faced Hornets which look extremely similar but they are larger. If you see that classic "Winnie the poo" style nest hanging then there is a 99% chance what you actually have are Bald Faced Hornets and NOT Black Jackets.
.jpg "Bald Faced Hornet Wasp Pattern")
BALD FACED HORNETS (Wasp - Pictured Above) The nest can be quite large for some colonies of Bald faced Hornets. It is made of a papery material and will usually range in size from a softball to a large pillow. Nests can commonly be found hanging from tree branches, bushes, and soffit. These insects are most easily distinguished by there large size, black and white colors and their aggressive nature. Amazingly, Bald Faced Hornets have the ability to spit venom into the eyes of people or predators. I learned this lesson the hard way and you will now see that we wear eye protection on all of our jobs. Bald faced hornets are a best case scenario if you need a bee removal. These infestations are the easiest and least complex to abate so the price to you will be minimal. On the scale of 1-10 of bee removal bad luck...... Bald faced hornets are a 1. From a danger standpoint Bald Faced Hornets are a 9. Thy will attack you just for fun with little to no provocation and are amongst the most aggressive of wasps. These wasps are very much attracted to light at night and you may see them bouncing off of your exterior house lights or your windows when no other lights are present. They will not reuse the same nest from year to year but their hive size can get extremely large (Watermelon size) if left to their own devices.
EUROPEAN HORNETS (Wasp - Pictured Above) European Hornets are easily recognized by their large size and black, yellow and rusty red coloration. About 1 - 1.5" long with a plump body shape, the European Hornet can appear rather intimidating. Their heads are yellow and red, and the thorax is black with red markings. The abdomen starts out red and continues with bands of yellow and black. Not common to the northeast, however I have removed them from Watermill Long Island to Greenwich Connecticut. Although typically active during the daytime, European Hornet workers may fly at night in humid, windless conditions and are attracted to external lighting and windowpanes. European Hornets have an exceptionally long seasonal cycle, reproducing from late August through November. Workers prey on a variety of insects -- including grasshoppers and other orthopterans, flies, honeybees and yellow jackets -- to feed their larvae. They are slightly less agressive then their counterpart (Bald Faced Hornets) and they dont make the Winnie the Poo style hanging nests like the Bald Faced Hornets do. We usually only remove one or two colonies of these each year because they are exceedingly rare and all the colonies we have removed have been from within a structure (the walls or soffits of a home, or the hollow of a tree).
EUROPEAN PAPER WASP (Wasp - Pictured Above)
These wasps also commonly build pancake like nests beneath shutters on your home. These are easily distinguished from Yellow Jacket wasps by the colore of their antenae. Paper Wasps have yellow or orange colored antenae while Yellow Jackets have black antenae (See photos above). Paper wasps have one of the most painful stings of all the insects on this page as i've learned the hard way. Wasp Nests are built from wood fiber and plant matter that the insects chew and form into a comb of hexagonal cells. Mature nests contain up to 200 cells. The wasps forage during the day and rest at night. Paper wasps are not territorial insects so it is very common to see multiple small active nests living in very close proximity to eachother hanging inside a garage, shed, or hanging off the soffit of your home.
COMMON & RED PAPER WASPS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
There are some color variations amongst Paper Wasps. Some Paper Wasp's coloration is a deep reddish-brown with black lines on the thorax, a darker brownish-black on the abdomen, and golden legs. Females have a reddish-brown face, while males have a golden yellow face. These wasps measure 3/4 inch long.
.jpg "Pipe Organ Mud Dauber Home")
MUD DAUBER (Wasp - Pictured Above)
It is a black or sometimes metallic blue looking wasp with a long, thin waist, and is not a social wasp. It lives like a hermit. There is no queen as each and every female is fertile and capable of laying eggs. It is not very aggressive and rarely stings people. However, it often builds its mud nests close to human activity.The mud dauber constructs brood chambers from mud on the sides of buildings and under eaves. The wasp stings and paralyzes spiders, lays an egg on them, and seals them inside the chambers. The wasp larva hatches and feeds on the spiders. An emergence hole in the mud means the wasp has emerged from the chamber.
CICADA KILLER (Wasp - Pictured Above)
These insects are HUGE! You will swear you have hummingbirds flying around. It is 2 1/2 to 3 inches long and black with pale-yellow markings on the last three abdominal segments. These wasps are very intimidating to see flying near you but they are one of the least aggressive species. They will only sting if handled roughly and the females of the species are the only ones capable of stinging. Luckily, these scary looking insects also have one of the weakest stings. If you have cicada killers you will see what appear to be dirt mounds dug into any exposed dirt with a hole in the center. These insects burrow underground. The hole will be about the diameter of your thumb so there will be no mistaking it for an ant mound. Sometimes there is a telltale slide mark present where they drag the Cicadas they kill down into their burrow. In the spring you may see these insects hovering around the grass or especially in areas of exposed dirt or sparsely covered lawn. After two to three weeks you will begin to see the dirt mounds like in the pictures above. Until these mounds are present we won't be able to provide any meaningful service to you. Our recommendation is to wait until a week or two after the mounds are created and then give us a call so we can help. These are solitary insects and that makes them more of a challenging wasp to abate.
These insects are HUGE! You will swear you have hummingbirds flying around. It is 2 1/2 to 3 inches long and black with pale-yellow markings on the last three abdominal segments. These wasps are very intimidating to see flying near you but they are one of the least aggressive species. They will only sting if handled roughly and the females of the species are the only ones capable of stinging. Luckily, these scary looking insects also have one of the weakest stings. If you have cicada killers you will see what appear to be dirt mounds dug into any exposed dirt with a hole in the center. These insects burrow underground. The hole will be about the diameter of your thumb so there will be no mistaking it for an ant mound. Sometimes there is a telltale slide mark present where they drag the Cicadas they kill down into their burrow. In the spring you may see these insects hovering around the grass or especially in areas of exposed dirt or sparsely covered lawn. After two to three weeks you will begin to see the dirt mounds like in the pictures above. Until these mounds are present we won't be able to provide any meaningful service to you. Our recommendation is to wait until a week or two after the mounds are created and then give us a call so we can help. These are solitary insects and that makes them more of a challenging wasp to abate.
MASON WASPS (Wasp - Pictured Above)
We tend to see Mason Wasps later in the summer usually after Carpenter Bees have gone dormant. They are very frequently seen entering the holes that were created by carpenter bees to either feed on the carpenter bee larva and to steel their den. These are solitary insects that live a hermit-like existence. They are extermely docile even though the females do have the capability of stinging. There is no queen or social colony involved with Mason Wasps and each female is fertile and capable of reproducing.
BEES:
.jpg "Honey Bee! Love these lil' guys!")
HONEY BEES (Bee - Pictured above)
Honey bees are easily distinguished from yellow jackets by the color of their legs. Honey bee legs are uniformly colored as dark brown or black. Honey bees also have "peach fuzz" or fine hairs on their thorax, abdomen, and legs.. Although they are not as fuzzy or hairy as a bumble bee, they are a stark contrast from yellow jackets which have no hair and appear glossy and bright yellow in color. Honey bees tend to be more of a muted rust color. It is also common to see pollen collected in the wide portion of their rear legs. Another way to determine if you are infested with honey bees or yellow jackets is to observe their entrance. If, during the middle of a warm summer day, you see only a handful of insects around the entrance then it is more than likely a yellow jacket colony. If you look at the entrance and there are 50 or 60 insects at the entrance at any given time, then it is more than likely a honey bee colony as they tend to be much larger than yellow jackets. Honey bees are the insect we see least frequently (to our dismay) and unfortunately for you, this is a worst case scenario infestation due to the large average size of a honey bee colony. This also means that honey bees are the most labor intensive to remove and many pest control agencies won't kill them because they see the importance of this insect to pollinating our crops. We will do a live removal of these bees and relocate them to a new home. Honey bees usually nest inside dark voids so if you are seeing an external nest on your property, you aren't looking at honey bees. The Winnie the Pooh cartoon would have you believe that the hive you see hanging on a branch is a colony of honey bees but that isn't how or where honey bees nest. If you can see a paper "Winnie the Pooh" hive then those are either Bald Faced Hornets or Aerial Yellow Jackets.
IF YOU BELEIVE YOU HAVE HONEY BEES YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!!
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HONEY BEE SWARM (Pictured Above)
Honey bees swarm in the late spring and early summer as a means of perpetuating their species. When a colony of honey bees outgrow their current home, they create a new queen and depart the nest with upwards of 40% of the original colony. These bees will cluster on branches, siding, cars, etc. until a suitable new home can be found. Bees who are swarming are at their most docile state since they have no home or resources to defend. I have a video on this site of a swarm removal that I did bare handed and with no suit or other protective equipment. Fortunately for you, this problem will fix itself as honey bee swarms are very temporary. They usually last from a few hours to about a week. As soon as they find a new suitable place to live they will depart just as quickly as they came. The only risk is that on rare occassion they can take up residence in the structure of your home and at that point we would have to do a structural removal which can be costly. The odds are against that occurring but it has happened in the past.
BUMBLE BEES (Bee- Pictured Above) It nests underground in colonies of several hundred individuals. The nests are usually in abandoned rodent burrows, in mulch, or under logs or debris. Occassionally they will even take up residence in the foundation or walls of your home. The abdomen of the bumble bee is covered with hairs. Bumble bees are much larger (But not necessarily longer) than honey bees and look more like flying cotton balls or marbles. They are certainly wider and rounder than honey bees and the fuzziest of the bees. The easiest way to tell if you have honey bees or bumble bees is to note the quantity of bees coming and going. With honey bees you will see anywhere from 10-50 flying around near the entry and it will be a highway of constant activity as they gather resources and go back out for more. With bumble bees you are lucky to see ONE insect every 30 seconds or so and sometimes you only see one insect every few minutes. Bumble bees are not typically aggressive and will usually only sting when provoked. Only the females of the species can sting and the males can be easily distinguished because they are all black. Bumble bees are very problematic from an abatement standpoint. Although the average nest is only the size of a baseball they are notoriously difficult to locate. 99% of every other bee and wasp we deal with makes their nest within about 18" of wherever they are entering and that predictability makes it easy for us to locate them. Bumble bees are the exact opposite. They are the hide and go seek champions of the insect world and with almost 100% certainty their hive will be 20 or 30 feet away from where they initially land and enter. We have actually gone years where we refused to even attempt a bumble bee removal because we didn't want to disappoint our customers or take anyone's money if we couldn't give them assurances of a positive outcome. Now we will make the attempt if you like but we are very candid and upfront in letting you know that our chances of success with this species are around 80% in the spring and that success rate drops down to about 50% in the late summer.
.jpg "Carpenter Bee")
CARPENTER BEES (Bee - Pictured Above) Carpenter bees are very frequently confused with bumble bees. Carpenter bees are much larger than your average bumble bee and although the coloration is the same, Carpenter Bees do NOT have much hair on their abdomen (Butts). If you look at the photos above and compare them to the bumble bee, the carpenter bee bodies look shiny black almost like the carapace of a beetle. The other large difference is that Carpenter Bees tend to be seen around the roof line, soffits, deck rails and outer edge boards of decks. Bumble bees are most frequently see going into or very close to the ground. Carpenter bees also leave telltale signs like sawdust on the ground around the areas where they are hovering and stains on the siding beneath their entrances which can be orange-ish to black. These stains are poop from the carpenter bees and means there is a tunnel entrance immediately above the stain. Carpenter bees tend to be an early season insect meaning we get calls on them from April and taper off to nothing around mid July. It is highly improbable for us to see carpenter bees in September and October. Carpenter bees are amongst the MOST docile of bees and we never use a bee suit when dealing with them and have never been stung by them. Only the females can sting and the males are stingerless and cannot hurt you. You can tell the males because they have a giant white square on their face and are the more curious and most likely to come hover near you. The females have an all black face and can sting but you would generally have to step on one barefoot or pick it up agressively to provoke it to sting. The biggest problem with carpenter bees isn't the risk of stings but the damage they do to a home. Think of them like flying termites. You may also see wood peckers chewing into the side of your house to get at the larvae of the carpenter bees. This is a sign of advanced and more severe infestation.
Carpenter bees make nests by tunneling into wood, vibrating their bodies as they rasp their mandibles against the wood, each nest having a single entrance which may have many adjacent tunnels. The entrance is often a perfectly circular hole measuring about 16 millimeters (0.63 in) on the underside of a beam, bench, or tree limb. Carpenter bees do not eat wood. They discard the bits of wood, or re-use particles to build partitions between cells. The tunnel functions as a nursery for brood and storage for the pollen/nectar upon which the brood subsists.
Carpenter bees are traditionally considered solitary bees, though some species have simple social nests in which mothers and daughters may cohabit. However, even solitary species tend to be gregarious, and often several will nest near each other. It has been occasionally reported that when females cohabit, there may be a division of labor between them, where one female may spend most of her time as a guard within the nest, motionless and near the entrance, while another female spends most of her time foraging for provisions.
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We provide bee removal service in Manhattan, Staten Island, Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Orange, Putnam, Dutchess, Kings, Ulster, Greene, Columbia, Richmond, Rockland, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Montgomery, Warren, Essex, Washington, and Albany County, all throughout New York, NY. Call us if your need a bee removal. 800-871-9496