What Are Stinging Insects?

Stinging insects include wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets, all common across the Carolinas from spring through fall. They are beneficial outdoors because they hunt other insects and help pollinate plants, but they become a problem when they build nests close to homes and outdoor living spaces.

Paper wasps have slender bodies and long legs and build open, umbrella-shaped nests under eaves and railings. Yellow jackets are shorter and stockier and often nest in the ground or inside wall voids. Bald-faced hornets build large gray paper nests in trees and on structures. Each of these can sting more than once, and yellow jackets and hornets are especially quick to defend a nest.

Because a mature nest can hold hundreds of insects, activity tends to peak in late summer when colonies are largest and most defensive.