Reviewed by William "Willy" Vizcarrondo, NYS DEC Certified Commercial Pesticide Applicator C1825832. Updated September 23, 2026.
Short answer
Look at the body and the nest. UC IPM describes paper wasps as slender, about an inch long, with long legs that hang in flight and a distinct narrow waist, nesting in open umbrella-shaped combs with visible cells. Yellowjackets are stockier, 1/2 to 1 inch, with jagged bright yellow and black stripes, and they nest in ground burrows, wall cavities or enclosed paper nests with a single entrance hole.
Legs and build. A paper wasp flies with its long legs trailing below it and looks thin and almost delicate, often brown or reddish-brown with yellow markings depending on the species. A yellowjacket is compact and fast, with a barely visible waist and sharp yellow and black banding, and it flies with its legs tucked. Yellowjackets are the ones at your soda can and the picnic table in September; UC IPM notes their fall shift to scavenging sugary foods. Paper wasps mostly hunt caterpillars and other insects and are not interested in your lunch.
Open comb versus hidden hole. A paper wasp nest is a single layer of cells, open to the air, hanging from a short stalk under an eave, a railing, a light fixture or a branch; you can see the cells and the wasps sitting on them. A yellowjacket nest is enclosed: a hole in the ground under a shrub with wasps streaming in and out, a gap in siding or a soffit with the same traffic, or a gray paper ball in a tree or under a deck if it's the bald-faced hornet, which is a yellowjacket in everything but name. UC IPM puts paper wasp colonies at 15 to 200 individuals and yellowjackets at 1,500 to 15,000, which is the real difference.
Because the risk and the treatment are different. UC IPM notes paper wasps are relatively unaggressive and rarely sting unless the nest is somewhere people pass close by, and a small nest can often be treated by a homeowner at night with an aerosol. Yellowjackets are highly defensive, ground nesters especially, and their nests are enclosed, so treatment means getting product into the cavity, at night, in full protective clothing, and never sealing the entrance until the colony is dead. A wall-void yellowjacket nest treated wrong ends up in the living room.
Both are everywhere here. Paper wasps take the eaves, porch ceilings, mailboxes and play sets across Nassau and Suffolk from May on, and most of the calls are about nests over a front door in Garden City or a deck in Sayville. Yellowjackets are the August and September problem: ground nests in shrub beds and lawn edges in Massapequa and Levittown, wall nests behind the siding of older Huntington and Northport houses, and bald-faced hornets in the big trees on the North Shore. Send us a photo of the nest and we'll tell you which one it is. Wasp and hornet work carries a 6-month written guarantee.
Related
Yellowjackets, by far. UC IPM describes them as highly defensive, especially ground nesters, and some species bite and sting at the same time. Paper wasps are relatively unaggressive and mostly sting when the nest is disturbed directly.
Yes, in practice. It's a large black and white aerial yellowjacket that builds the gray paper football nest in trees and on buildings, and it defends that nest the way ground yellowjackets defend theirs.
Those are cicada killers, not yellowjackets. They're solitary, up to 2 inches long, dig individual burrows in bare sandy soil, and the females almost never sting people. They have their own page.
Still not sure? Call (516) 509-6001 and we'll tell you what you're dealing with.