CLOSED: ground-nesting bee, black & white

Not sure if they're colony-nesters or solitaries with neighboring holes. First photo shows filament (stinger? ovipositor?) from tip of abdomen, later photos it seems to have retracted. Painful sting.

I dont know much in the way of identifying insects, but to me that looks more like a wasp than a bee.

Looks like a bald faced hornet to me.

That too was my initial impression, but bald-faced hornets, to the best of my knowledge, do not make below-ground nests...

Vespula acadica, aka Yellow Jacket.

I have serious doubts about it being Vespula acadacia - see
http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=Vespula+acadica

My reference did not have "face" markings included. I was going by the body markings and range information. After doing some googling it seems my old reference kind of stinks. It's looking more like Vespula consobrina to me now. What is your call, Flapdoodle?

That certainly seems more likely than any of the other possibilities that have been considered!

Blackjacket it is! (Vespula consobrina)

Thank you, everyone! In the meantime, I've been delving into details of insect anatomy. The shape of the pronotum & clypeus (which I'm calling the shoulder-plate & face-plate!), the ovipositor modified into a stinger, the particulars of its wing venation and lack of jugal lobe on the hindwing, had confirmed it's in the yellow-jacket/hornet sub-family Vespinae. That's as far as my book could take me.

I did a web search for your Vespula consobrina suggestion. The Discover Life page for this species matched the facial markings exactly. Bugguide.net page was very helpful with pictures and habitat info, and informed me that the compound eye extending down to almost touch the mandible places it in the genus Vespula; a tip to remember for later. Also came up with this helpful page: http://www.vespa-crabro.com/vespula-consobrina.htm , which compares blackjacket with bald-faced hornet.

I happen to have a bald-faced hornet in my insect box to compare it to; my blackjacket is indeed much smaller than the bald-faced hornet, also the presence of the light band higher up on the abdomen near the waist, the lower part of the gena (plate behind the eye) being black rather than all white, the unbranched white band on the shoulder-plate, and pictures on the web clinch it for me, as far as I can tell as an amateur. Ground-nesting in coniferous forest area in small colonies also fits, and we're close enough to the west coast and high enough in the foothills to fit the range. Apparently my specimen is a blackjacket worker, thus the thinner white abdominal bands; apparently blackjacket queens have thicker bands more like a bald-faced hornet. Whoot! Another one to add to our species list!

This message was edited Jul 31, 2014 9:16 AM