There are three Vespa species in Singapore, and they are for a change easy to identify.
V. affinis has a yellow band on the first and second segment of the abdomen, while V. analis is almost entirely black, and V. tropics has a yellow band only on the second segment of the abdomen.
Our species is in my experience the most commonly seen in Singapore. Similar to the European hornet, Vespa crabro, they aren’t interested in you or your food at all. While a wasp or yellowjacket can be quite clingy, you won’t ever be close to a hornet. It is even difficult to get a picture, because they will immediately take off when you get closer. This is kind of good news, because they are pretty impressive, though V. affinis is one of the smaller hornet species. Still they produce a loud, deep buzzing sound while they fly from flower to flower.
In Europe yellowjackets are much more common than hornets. In late summer, they will join every meal you have outside. Some people really freak out about that. It is the season for plums, and you wouldn’t have plum cake in your backyard without a swarm of wasps around you.
In Singapore you would usually see no yellowjackets at all. You will rather see all kinds of solitary wasps which look very different from yellowjackets. Why is that? I couldn’t find much about yellowjackets in Singapore at all. There might be some, but I could imagine that the large number of lizards, geckos, ants, and birds keep the population of wasps small. In residential areas in Germany you would only have few potential predators, like frogs around water bodies and some spiders. The number of insectivorous birds is very limited, and lizards are found in a few areas only. You might want to think about a more natural garden design with habitats for wasp-predators when you can’t deal with wasps?!
Seems our Lesser banded hornet is pretty defensive, and several sting reports about anaphylaxis emphasize that it is better to not get close to a nest. When you are not allergic, approx. 300 stings would be fatal. This sound like a high number, but there are a few hundred workers in a large nest. It is then only one sting per worker, so totally feasible to happen. “Bee” careful with hornets, but keep in mind they are not interested in you, as long as you aren’t interested in their nest.
Intere-“sting” is also the use of the words wasp and hornet. Both groups are found in the subfamily Vespidae of the family Vespinae, but hornets are in the genus Vespa, while other vasps are either in Vespula, Provespula or Dolichovespula. The subfamily Vespinae contains only about 60 species, while there are 4000 – 5000 other species of wasps! So many more to discover!
There’s a lot of ” vesp” in the scientific names, making it easy to find out why we say wasp. But the word hornet must have a different background. Seems it is not 100% clear, but two theories found here make some sense: The syllable “Horn” could relate to the horn shaped stinger of a hornet, which is of course more prominent in a large hornet than in a smaller wasp. Or, it is the loud buzzing sound that reminded people on the sound of a horn, the wind instrument. I never thought of that, and it a nice theory, especially when you have a hornet with a (yellow) band!
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