Wasps and yellow jackets are the most common stinging insect we exterminate. They are social insects that produce new nests of paper each year with the help of wood and saliva. A colony is started by a queen, which is a fertilized female. The queen carries out all of the duties and chores of building a new colony; additionally, she feeds and develops her young. Later in the season, as the colony size rapidly increases, wasps are raised to assist colony development. At the end of the season, the nest is abandoned and the wasps disperse to find protection during the winter.
For food, wasps like insects and can therefore be helpful to gardeners by eating caterpillars and other plant-destroying insects. Some yellow jackets are scavengers and become a nuisance when they hang around garbage or outside events that involve food.

Adult worker wasps have characteristic black and yellow patterning on the abdomen. They have a black head and thorax. The fore and hind wings are connected, giving the appearance that wasps have only one wing per side. Their stingers differ from those of bees since they may be used multiple times (they do not fall out after stinging).
Wasps (yellow jackets) build their nests underground in rodent burrows and in dark enclosed areas of buildings such as crawl spaces and voids between walls. Their presence is most noticeable at the end of the season when there are large numbers of wasps scavenging.