Lorna, why did you take your hummer feeder down, because of the ants? You could have just purchased an ant moat to go on top of it or purchase a feeder that has an ant moat. Is there a problem with killing ants too, are they beneficial, cause here at my home I have millions that invade my yards and land and even my home every single year. I was told I have several colonies. I think sometimes they live in my walls. As far as wasps go, they like to build around my back door, they do not bother my hummer feeders, like the ants used to. But......they do get into my house a lot since they build right next to the back door. And there is nothing like having flying wasps in your home, along with ants. I do nothing about either, except kill them when they are in my home.....and use an ant moat for my feeders. Now if I was getting wasps on my feeders, I would probably do something about that. Whenever my daughter tries to weed eat, she get hoarded by bees and gets stung sometimes. I suppose it is the kind that burrow in the ground. She is 16 and scared to death of bees, but still does it. What do we do about this situation? I think in certain situations, you have to do something, whatever that might be, good or bad. Do you get JB's? What do you do about them?? I am at a loss because I think I am going to lose a large tree because of them.

The light brown with streaks rather than gray sounds like bald faced hornet to me, but have you seen the wasps coming or going to know size or color? I know they are beneficial, but they don't get to live anywhere I'm going to live...like my/your patio. I tangled with an unnoticed nest of bald faced hornets when pruning a rhododendron for a neighbor a few years ago (picture down on my knees, wedged in between shrub and fence, happily removing limbs she couldn't easily get to at 80 yrs old) and while not allergic, I felt ill from the stings for about 2 days with swelling and redness at the sting sites (neck), headache...I'd rather not experience that again. They didn't warn me I was too close, just began stinging. More to the story, the nest was in the rhododendron, we thought rather than call an exterminator (her budget sparse) or risk burning leaves with a heavy dose of homeowner type spray, we would go after dark and cut the nest from the shrub. The plan was to have the nest fall into a 5 gal bucket of hot soapy water (night, flashlights)...but the nest fell, hung up on another branch and missed the bucket completely. If you ever wondered, they will come out at night if disturbed...we did have to use the spray.

I have a Kodak Easyshare CX6230 which can get as close as 5 inches from a subject, but no closer. It also has optical zoom which gets you a little closer, but as with any zoom used without a tripod, any shaking, breathing, even your pulse, can make the image blurry. Cost was about $140 in 2004.

Hard for me to tell. It looks like the resting wing positions are different, but maybe they aren't all resting. :P But really, there are so many species that are similar in appearance. You kinda have to stick them on a pin and put them under magnification to look at wing vein patterns and other features. Entomologists have to kill the things they love. Sometimes when an insect comes out of the cocoon or molts or whatever, they can change color a little over time their exoskeleton hardens, but there shouldn't be much change. The markings sholdn't change. I can't tell if these have the same markings.