Vespid

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For the alien race allied with the Tau from the Warhammer 40,000 game, see Vespid (Warhammer 40,000)

iVespid wasps

Southern yellowjacket (Vespula squamosa) queen

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Suborder:	Apocrita
Superfamily:	Vespoidea
Family:	Vespidae

Subfamilies

Eumeninae: potter wasps
Euparagiinae
Masarinae: pollen wasps
Polistinae: paper wasps
Stenogastrinae
Vespinae: yellowjackets, hornets

The Vespidae are a large (nearly 5,000 species), diverse, cosmopolitan family of wasps, including nearly all the known eusocial wasps and many solitary wasps. Each social wasp colony includes a queen and a number of female workers with varying degrees of sterility relative to the queen. In temperate social species, colonies usually only last one year, dying at the onset of winter. New queens and males (drones) are produced towards the end of the summer, and after mating, the queens hibernate over winter in cracks or other sheltered locations. The nests of most species are constructed out of mud, but polistines and vespines use plant fibers, chewed to form a sort of paper.

The nest pictured below was made by either the bald-faced hornet (American), Dolichovespula maculata (sometimes classified as Vespula maculata), or the aerial yellowjacket (that is aerial-nesting yellowjacket), Dolichovespula arenaria. The wasp pictured at right is a yellowjacket queen, Vespula squamosa.