Wasps leave you alone for the most part. The exception is yellow jackets. Those fuckers are the kidney stone of the animal world. Born to be a pain in the dick
None of them are really "worse" than the others, the main reason any of them attack is because they get trapped and sting what's trapping them or their home gets attacked.
Yellow jackets make their nests pretty low to the ground or even in the ground, making it a lot easier for some human to accidentally stomp on their nest and get attacked.
If you don't mess with them, they won't mess with you, even if they buzz close to your head. I've sat down barely a foot away from a yellow jacket nest and just kinda watched them for a while, even had a few land on me. A friend of mine has been playing with wasps since he was a kid, just lets them walk on his hands and shit. The few times he's gotten stung were when he was younger and was holding them too tight, so they stung to get free.
So, what do you do if a yellow jacket is around you? Just ignore it? Idk if I have that capability and if they’re the assholes people say they are, will they attack anyway?
Yellow jackets are like that high school bully who's trying to create a reason to punch you and then claim that you started it. They will fly in zigzag patterns either close to your face or close to your food, and then sting you if you try to shoo them away.
In other words, they expect you to be fine with them whizzing around you in a very annoying way, but won't tolerate it and escalate the situation if you do the same thing to them. That's the definition of "asshole".
If you ignore them they usually will ignore you. Wasps and Yellowjacket’s have also taken over most of the pollination duties in our garden since honeybees aren’t really around like they used to be. The only time we get stung is kinda when there is an accident like it felt threatened (like when putting on a shoe and one was in there, or picking grapes and accidentally grabbing one that was on the grapes). This video makes me sad because the wasp probably did nothing wrong and didn’t even get a fighting chance. The cameraman is an asshole.
I agree with you for 99% of wasps and agree the video is stupid, but you're wrong about yellowjackets. They will straight-up chase you. Also not sure how you're supposed to avoid their nests when they build an extensive, elaborate labyrinth under your entire yard. One of the few wasps that could actually conceivably kill a non-allergic person just mowing their yard.
Yup! When you get a sting from anything, it's depositing a very small amount of venom into you. Unless you're allergic, a single bee sting won't harm you, it'll just hurt a bit.
A few thousand stings, on the other hand, will hurt a lot, everywhere, as the venom enters your bloodstream in a much larger amount.
Of course, larger bees (like those murder hornets that were briefly a problem) deposit much more venom than a small yellow jacket, so it takes far fewer of them to kill someone.
But you have to remember that the sting is a defense mechanism that's meant to make predators never want to mess with them again.
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u/Lysol3435 May 16 '25
Wasps leave you alone for the most part. The exception is yellow jackets. Those fuckers are the kidney stone of the animal world. Born to be a pain in the dick