The wasp in the third photo (file name IMG 5341) is a Yellowjacket, but we can't identify the first wasp or the other bee as we can't see enough details and can't magnify the images as the file sizes are too small. Social wasps that live in shared nests like hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps can sting to defend the nest when disturbed, but solitary bees should not as they have no motivation to do so. Social wasps also do not re-use nests from year to year, so the only adults active and roaming around now are queens, each of which overwintered from last year by herself and is now searching for a nest site of her own. The rest of her nestmate workers, mother, and male wasps died. Queens raise their first batch of worker daughters by themselves, and do all the initial work of nest construction, and only once these young have matured will there be other members of the nest coming and going to help build the paper layers of the nest and to feed their siblings.

We think it's too early yet for a nest to have any workers (or at the very least there will be very few of them) so an exterminator may not be needed if you can just seal-up any gaps allowing the wasps/bees access to nesting sites. Since nests start from scratch every spring, the sooner this can be addressed, the better and the simpler it will be in terms of avoiding defensive stings. Using a pesticide to deter or poison the wasps would be the last resort, since the more effective method is to block access in the first place.

Miri

Hello, Thank you so much for so much detailed information and advice. Here are better photos of the other type of bee. Is it a mason bee? If so, then I am sorry to have to block access to them, too, but don’t want the yellowjackets. Where are they in their lifecycle and is there a time which is better than others  to seal up?

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for the additional photos, but we unfortunately still cannot determine the bee's identity from the pictures. There are over 400 species of bee (many native) in Maryland and several look quite similar to each other unless they can be examined closely (like under a microscope, sometimes). Mason bees are in the same bee family as Leafcutter bees (the scientific classification is Megachilidae), and about 73 species are documented from this group in Maryland. Therefore, they may not all have life cycles that overlap enough to generalize about the timing of their activities. Either way, though, they will be active for only a limited time during which they are provisioning nests with food for their larvae to eat and will then seal-up the tunnel entrance and the adults will die off. No activity is likely to follow until those larvae mature over the course of the year and the resulting adults emerge next spring, so the ideal time to block access without killing too many of them is during the time females are locating nest sites but before they've settled-in, which might be right now or a few weeks ago.

You could share photos with more detail and better lighting of the bee itself with ID apps like iNaturalist to see if experts there can ID the bee with more specificity than we can. We are currently without an entomologist at HGIC so we are sorry to say we cannot provide more accurate educated guesses to its ID at this time.

Miri

Hello Miri,

You're welcome.