Yellowjacket or yellow jacket is the common name in North America for predatory social wasps of the genera Vespula and Dolichovespula.

They can be identified by their distinctive markings, their occurrence only in colonies, and a characteristic, rapid, side-to-side flight pattern prior to landing.

[2] Yellowjackets have lance-like stingers with small barbs, and typically sting repeatedly,[1] though occasionally a stinger becomes lodged and pulls free of the wasp's body; the venom, like most bee and wasp venoms, is primarily dangerous to only those humans who are allergic or are stung many times.

Their mouthparts are well-developed with strong mandibles for capturing and chewing insects, with probosces for sucking nectar, fruit, and other juices.

Fertilized queens are found in protected places such as in hollow logs, stumps, under bark, leaf litter, soil cavities, and man-made structures.

By midsummer, the first adult workers emerge and assume the tasks of nest expansion, foraging for food, care of the queen and larvae, and colony defense.

The colony then expands rapidly, reaching a maximum size of 4,000–5,000[3] workers and a nest of 10,000–15,000 cells in late summer.

The adult yellowjacket diet consists primarily of sugars and carbohydrates, such as fruits, flower nectar, and tree sap.

Foraging workers pursue sources of sugar outside the nest including ripe fruits and human garbage.

In parts of Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and southern coastal areas of the United States, the winters are mild enough to allow nest overwintering.

The German yellowjacket builds its nests in cavities—not necessarily underground—with the peak worker population in temperate areas between 1000 and 3000 individuals between May and August.

[citation needed] In the southeastern United States, where southern yellowjacket (Vespula squamosa) nests may persist through the winter, colony sizes of this species may reach 100,000 adult wasps.

[8] In the United Kingdom the rugby union team Wasps RFC traditionally used a yellowjacket as their club emblem.

The Marvel Comics character Yellowjacket, who is based on the insect, is one of the various identities adopted by Hank Pym, who is most commonly known as Ant-Man.

The television series, Yellowjackets, features a girls’ soccer team which gets stranded in the wilderness and resorts to extreme measures to survive.