 had to Medi-vaced by helicopter out of the Boy Scout camps due to massive number of stings from these wasps.
Students frequently ask me what is the worst sting-bite that I personally have experienced. I have been stung by many scorpions, many species of ants, exotic caterpillars and hundreds of bees at one time and bitten by large beetles, giant waterbugs, assassin bugs, various tarantulas and black widows but the worst encounter was by a colony of yellow jackets. The sting of a yellow jacket or hornet is considerably worse than that of a honeybee. I was once called to remove a honeybee nest from a property. When I got there it was a yellow jacket nest in the ground. Even though, I was only prepared for honeybees (a veil and hat) I decided to continue. After about 15 stings (over a period of 20 minutes) I decided to retreat and get some better protective clothing. By the time I got back to my vehicle most of my body had turned bright red with hives and large red welts. Besides the initial pain I itched for several days. I once received a single sting from a large hornet in Mexico. The initial pain was much worse than that of a honeybee and within less than one minute I had such a severe headache that I could not stand up for several minutes.
Bald Face Hornet-Dolichovespula maculata. This is a North American insect commonly called the bald-faced hornet (or white-faced hornet or white-tailed hornet). Its well-known features include its hanging paper nests and the females' habit of defending them with repeated stings.
Bald Face Hornet. Image Courtesy of PiccoloNamek.
It belongs to a genus of wasps called yellow jackets in North America, but is not called that because it lacks yellow coloring. Instead, it is called a hornet in the American sense of a wasp that builds paper nests, especially one of the subfamily Vespinae. It is not a "true hornet" in the British sense, that is, a member of the genus Vespa in the same subfamily, such as the Asian giant hornet or the European hornet.
The bald-faced hornet lives through