Insect and Spider Identification: CLOSED: what kind of bee or wasp?, 1 by sterhill

sterhill wrote:
I have quite a lot of these and whereas they do look somewhat like yellow jackets (ugh!) they are small, I'd say about 3/8" to maybe a little less than 1/2" long… Usually YJs are bigger. What do you think? They are really hard to get a photo of as they move very fast and seldom alight on anything.

Any help appreciated. Praying they are not some new smaller YJ! They don't chase after you like the YJs do…

you can sorta see scale by the pine needles in this photo

TIA, Sterling