What Is the Difference Between a Wasp, a Yellowjacket, and a Hornet?

All hornets and yellowjackets are wasps; not all wasps are hornets or yellowjackets. "Wasp" covers a very large group, including solitary species like mud daubers that don't defend a colony at all, and social species that live in colonies with workers and a queen. Yellowjackets (genus Vespula and Dolichovespula) and true hornets, including the introduced European hornet, are specific branches of that social-wasp group, alongside paper wasps, which build the open, umbrella-shaped combs seen under eaves and porches.

Yellowjackets favor underground cavities — often an old rodent burrow — or gaps inside walls and structures, which makes them harder to detect and treat than an exposed nest. Bald-faced hornets build large, enclosed aerial paper nests, often high up in a tree or on a structure, visible but not always reachable safely. The European hornet nests in hollow trees or wall voids and is unusual among this group for staying active after dark. Each of those patterns feeds directly into the species-by-species DIY viability that /top-diy-methods publishes — yellowjacket, bald-faced hornet, and European hornet nests are all rated as a professional job there, while paper wasp and mud dauber nests are rated as workable with the right care.

This page exists to explain why the label matters for the decision, not to teach full visual identification — that depth, including how to tell each one apart by sight, lives on /wasp-species and /yellowjackets. If you already know which one you're dealing with, /top-diy-methods is the next stop for what that means for removal.