What’s the difference between a yellow jacket and a wasp?
Both are a type of social wasp, meaning they live in a colony. Yellow jackets are a group within the species social wasps. When we think of the term “wasp,” we are often thinking about the paper wasp, another type of social wasp. Yellow jackets, incidently, are the more vicious of the two types, and are commonly found at picnics, campgrounds, and garbage cans at the end of summer in search of foods and sweets to substitute for their dwindling natural prey. Read more about yellow jackets and wasps – see our section All About Wasps & Hornets: Facts.
