Common Wasp, Yellowjacket

I am highly allergic to both the yellow and white-faced hornets. They may be beneficial, but they cause more fear in me than Africanized honeybees. A several hundred aggressive hornets stinging dozens of times each can certainly be as dangerous as several thousand bees stinging once each.

Both can be deadly if not treated with respect.

These aggressive scavangers get into everything. I've found that they become particularly unpredictible in the fall when it cools. They can sting without warning or reason. They act solitary but can group if one of them finds something. A drip of spilled pop (soda) can attract a number of them and they tend to circle like vultures. I'm allergic to stings and they can be particularily frustrating when I do cuttings as they keep coming back around. In a mild-winter followed by a hot/dry summer produces the largest numbers.

This may be an important pollinator, but this is one of the nastier wasps I have had experiences with. Unlike the case with honey bees, these can sting over and over, and when you stumble into a nest of them you can run for many hundreds of yards before they give up chasing you, and give you hundreds of stings in the mean time. However, most of my experiences with this wasp has been with their annoying behavior around food than anything else... very common in the city of Los Angeles, often frequenting outdoor eating areas and fast food restaraunts (not sure what they are looking for), and will hover around you and your meal insessantly, being very difficult to dissuade. At least I have never had one sting me in such a situation.