As a result, the honeybee dies after stinging. The stinger gets torn out of the bee's body as it tries to fly away. Only honeybees have special hooks on their stinger that keep the stinger in the skin after a person is stung. Wasps and many bees can sting more than once because they are able to pull out their stinger without injuring themselves. A red bump surrounded by white skin will develop around the sting, except for the sting of the fire ant, which turns into an itchy blister. The site of the sting will feel hot and it may itch. Honeybees, wasps, hornets, fire ants, and yellowjackets may look different and have different homes, but they all sting when they are upset! If a person is stung by any of these insects, the sting will feel a lot like a shot at the doctor's office. Fire ants are tiny and reddish-brown and live in nests under the ground. They make their nests in the ground or in old tree stumps.Īnts are small insects that can be brown, black, or red. Yellowjackets have yellow and black stripes on their bodies and are smaller than hornets and honeybees.Bald-faced hornets are black with white markings, and they build papery nests shaped like footballs in trees and shrubs.Two common types of wasps are bald-faced hornets and yellowjackets: There are also thousands of different types of wasps in the world. They are not fuzzy like bees, but seem kind of smooth and shiny, and they have skinnier bodies.

Wasps are closely related to bees, but instead of only feeding on pollen and honey, wasps eat animal food, other insects, or spiders. Then they turn the nectar into honey for food. These bees build nests out of wax in old trees and manmade hives (like the ones that beekeepers take care of) and spend a lot of their time collecting nectar and pollen from flowers. The most familiar kind of bee is the honeybee. There are thousands of different types of bees worldwide, and they can be many different colors. But honeybees are really only one of a group of insects that includes other bees, wasps, and ants.īees are fuzzy insects that feed on flowers. Bee, or honeybee, is the word many people use to describe any flying insect that has wings and a stinger.

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