Garden Pests and Diseases: paper wasps, 0 by Night_Bloom

Night_Bloom wrote:
Thanks for your picture, Equilibrium. It makes me pretty sure now that I don't have any of the European variety of paper wasp at my home. If I had waited for the bug guide page to fully load, I might've come to the same conclusion, but I wasn't that patient (I have dial-up.) I never realized how similar they do look to yellow jackets.

It seems that the only species I have seen are all some variation of red or brown. Here's the main one at my house that builds umbrella nests (see picture below). I was thinking that it was different from the red one I posted earlier, but it may not be - or it could be a similar species (it seems that both P. metricus and P. perplexus are similarly colored, though P. perplexus seems to prefer nesting in trees.)

The only black and yellow guys I've seen are my yellow jackets - I miss that colony I had near the fence last year. They were very entertaining to watch.