Hawaii’s wasps are unlike those in any other US state, and the reason comes down to two facts. First, the islands have no native social wasps — every yellowjacket and paper wasp you’ll see in a Hawaii backyard descends from an accidental introduction. Second, Hawaii has no real winter, so colonies that would die off in October on the mainland can survive year after year and grow to sizes almost never seen in the continental US.
For non-aggressive wasps I've had great luck spraying nests with this Spectracide wasp remover in the evening. For a nest up high in an eave, soffit, or tree, this Gotcha pole adapter clamps onto the can so you can spray from the end of an extension pole and treat the nest from 10+ feet away instead of standing right under it. And for anything aggressive I wear this ridiculous-looking upper torso beekeeping suit and keep my distance. It seems silly, but trust me, I learned the hard way.
That combination changes almost everything a mainland homeowner thinks they know about wasps: when nests peak, how big they get, whether waiting one out works, and which species you’re likely to meet. This guide covers what actually lives here, how to tell the species apart, how elevation and island change the picture, and what to do about a nest.
For a nationwide overview, see our wasps by state regional guide; for physical identification features that apply to any species, see the complete wasp identification guide.
| Wasp | Looks like | Nests | Sting risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western yellowjacket | Short, stocky, bold black and yellow bands | Underground, wall voids, banks | High — defensive, stings repeatedly |
| Paper wasps (Polistes spp.) | Slender, long dangling legs, brown to yellow | Open umbrella combs under eaves | Moderate — defensive near the nest |
| Black-and-yellow mud dauber | Very thin thread waist, long body | Mud tubes on walls and ceilings | Very low — rarely stings |
| Keyhole wasp | Small, dark, faint pale markings | Plugs keyholes, pipes, tubes | Very low |
| Native solitary wasps | Small, dark, often pale-faced | Cavities, hollow stems | Very low |
If something stung you repeatedly at a picnic, on a hiking trail, or while you were mowing, it was almost certainly a western yellowjacket. If a papery, open-celled comb hangs under your eave, that’s a paper wasp.
Hawaii is the most isolated major island chain on Earth, and social wasps never made it here on their own. The islands’ native wasp fauna is entirely solitary — small, non-aggressive species that hunt insects or spiders to provision individual nest cells. Every stinging social wasp in Hawaii today arrived with people or cargo.
On the mainland, a yellowjacket or paper wasp colony follows a strict one-year cycle: a queen starts a nest in spring, the colony peaks in late summer, and a hard freeze kills everyone but the next year’s queens. Old nests are abandoned and never reused. See our queen wasp guide for how that cycle normally works.
In Hawaii’s warm lowlands and mid-elevations, that killing freeze never comes. Some colonies simply keep going. Western yellowjacket nests in Hawaii have been documented overwintering into a second or even third year, accumulating multiple egg-laying queens and worker populations far beyond the few thousand typical of a mainland nest. Researchers studying these perennial colonies on Maui and Hawaiʻi Island have recorded nests with worker counts in the hundreds of thousands.
For a homeowner this has one very practical consequence: “wait until winter and it’ll die” is not reliable advice in Hawaii. A nest you ignore in September may be twice the size in March.
Western yellowjackets do best in cooler, drier conditions, which in Hawaii means elevation rather than latitude. Populations are heaviest in upcountry and mountain areas — Haleakalā and upcountry Maui, the Volcano and Waimea areas on Hawaiʻi Island, and cooler interior parts of Kauaʻi. Hot, humid coastal resort and town areas generally see fewer yellowjackets and proportionally more paper wasps and mud daubers.
This is Hawaii’s problem wasp — the only one most residents will ever be stung by more than once.
Identification: Stocky and compact, about half an inch long, with crisp black and yellow banding and a short, thick waist. Yellowjackets fly with their legs tucked in, giving them a bullet-like appearance, and they are noticeably faster and less “dangly” in flight than paper wasps. Our yellow jacket wasp guide covers the species in depth, and yellow jacket vs wasp walks through the distinctions.
History in Hawaii: Vespula pensylvanica was recorded in the islands as early as the first decades of the 1900s but remained scarce. It became abundant and widespread only after a later introduction in the late 1970s, and spread rapidly through the 1980s across all the main islands.
Nests: Almost always concealed. In Hawaii yellowjackets nest in rodent burrows and other ground cavities, road cuts and eroded banks, retaining walls, rock piles, wall voids, and under decks and lānai flooring. There is usually no visible nest — just a steady stream of wasps going in and out of a hole. Our guides to wasps in grass and underground wasp nests cover how to locate and assess these.
Behavior: Yellowjackets defend the nest vigorously and will pursue an intruder some distance. Late in a colony’s growth they shift from hunting insects to scavenging sugar and protein, which is when they show up at picnics, rubbish bins, hummingbird feeders, and open drinks. Unlike honey bees, a yellowjacket can sting repeatedly.
Ecological impact: Western yellowjackets are one of Hawaii’s more damaging invasive insects. They prey heavily on native arthropods — including endemic insects and spiders found nowhere else — and compete with native birds for the same food. In high-elevation natural areas such as Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and Haleakalā National Parks, yellowjacket control has been an ongoing conservation priority for decades.
Several Polistes paper wasps are established across the islands, including the yellow paper wasp (Polistes aurifer), the common paper wasp (Polistes exclamans), and the Macao paper wasp (Polistes olivaceus). All are introduced.
Identification: Slender bodies, a narrow waist, and long legs that dangle noticeably in flight — the single most reliable field mark separating them from yellowjackets. Colors range from mostly yellow to reddish brown with darker markings. See our paper wasp guide and paper wasp vs yellow jacket for detailed comparisons.
Nests: An open, downward-facing comb of hexagonal cells hanging from a short stalk, with no outer paper envelope. Look under eaves and lānai ceilings, in carports and sheds, behind shutters, under railings, and inside barbecue grills and beach umbrellas. Because there’s no winter shutdown, Hawaii paper wasp nests can be built up and expanded over long stretches rather than restarting each spring.
Behavior: Far less aggressive than yellowjackets away from the nest — they will usually ignore you entirely — but they defend the comb itself and sting when it’s bumped, sprayed, or vibrated. Nests within arm’s reach of a doorway, clothesline, or play area are the ones worth dealing with. See how to get rid of paper wasps for safe options.
Introduced but ubiquitous, and completely harmless in practice. Mud daubers have an unmistakable thread-thin waist and build finger-shaped mud tubes on walls, ceilings, sheds, and sheltered exterior surfaces. Each cell is stocked with paralyzed spiders for a single larva. They are solitary, don’t defend the nest, and sting people only under extreme provocation.
Old mud nests can simply be scraped off with a putty knife once the emergence holes show the young wasps have left. Our mud dauber guide and mud dauber vs wasp explain how to tell them from stinging species.
A small, dark solitary wasp established in Hawaii that nests in narrow tubes and cavities — including keyholes, exposed pipe ends, bolt holes, and vent openings, which is where the name comes from. It seals each nest with a mud plug. It’s not aggressive, but it will happily block small openings around a house, and it’s worth screening exposed tubes and vents rather than letting them fill.
The islands do have native wasps — they simply aren’t the ones that sting people. Hawaii’s endemic mason and potter wasps (subfamily Eumeninae, including the large endemic genus Nesodynerus) radiated into well over a hundred species found nowhere else on Earth. They are small, dark, and solitary, nest in cavities and hollow stems, and hunt caterpillars to provision their young. Several native lineages are in decline, in part from predation and competition by introduced species including yellowjackets and ants. Our potter wasp guide covers this group’s general biology.
If you find a small, quiet, non-social wasp nesting in a cavity in a natural area, leave it alone — it may well be endemic.
Hawaii is home to one of the clearest examples anywhere of what a tiny, non-stinging wasp can do to an ecosystem. The Erythrina gall wasp (Quadrastichus erythrinae), a minute invasive gall wasp first detected on Oʻahu in 2005, spread through the islands within months and devastated Hawaii’s native wiliwili trees (Erythrina sandwicensis) along with ornamental coral trees. Infested leaves curl into deformed galls and trees defoliate and die.
The response was itself a wasp: after screening, a parasitoid wasp (Eurytoma erythrinae) was released as a biological control agent beginning in 2008 and has substantially reduced gall wasp damage, allowing wiliwili to recover in many areas.
Neither species stings, and neither is anything a homeowner needs to control. It’s a useful reminder that most wasps — in Hawaii and everywhere else — are small, harmless, and doing something ecologically important. See our gall wasp guide for how gall-formers work generally.
Just as useful as knowing what’s here is knowing what isn’t:
If you genuinely believe you’ve seen a hornet-sized wasp in Hawaii, report it. Hawaii’s statewide invasive species hotline is 643-PEST (643pest.org), run through the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Our wasp identification guide covers the general bee-versus-wasp features that apply anywhere.
Hawaii doesn’t have a wasp “season” in the mainland sense, but activity isn’t flat either.
| Period | What’s happening |
|---|---|
| February–April | Nest founding peaks; small paper wasp combs appear under eaves. Easiest and safest time to knock down a new nest. |
| May–July | Colonies build rapidly. Yellowjacket foraging picks up; nests become harder to approach. |
| August–October | Typical peak in colony size and scavenging behavior — wasps at rubbish bins, picnics, and drinks. |
| November–January | Mainland colonies would die here; many Hawaii colonies simply slow down. Overwintered nests resume growth into a second year. |
Practical takeaway: the early-year window is when nest removal is easiest, and the absence of a winter reset means small problems should be handled rather than waited out. Our guide to when wasps are most active covers daily and seasonal activity patterns in more detail.
Handle it yourself only if all of these are true: the nest is a small, new paper wasp comb (roughly golf-ball size or smaller, a handful of cells and a few wasps), it’s reachable from the ground, no one in the household has a sting allergy, and you can work at dusk when wasps are on the nest and least active.
Call a professional if: the nest is a yellowjacket nest of any size, it’s in the ground or a wall void, it’s above ground-floor reach, it’s near a doorway or high-traffic lānai, it’s large or you can’t see where it ends, or anyone in the household has a known sting allergy. Given how large perennial Hawaii yellowjacket colonies can get, an underground nest is not a DIY project — a disturbed colony can produce dozens of stings in seconds.
Never pour fuel, boiling water, or bleach into a ground nest, seal a wall-void nest shut (the wasps chew inward into the living space), or use a ladder while spraying. Our wasp nest removal safety guide covers method selection, and wasp nest removal cost gives realistic pricing expectations.
Most stings need nothing more than washing the area, a cold pack, and an oral antihistamine for itching. Swelling that spreads over a day or two is common and usually a large local reaction rather than an allergy.
Call 911 immediately for difficulty breathing, throat or tongue swelling, dizziness or fainting, widespread hives, or vomiting after a sting — these are signs of anaphylaxis. Also seek care for stings inside the mouth or throat, and for a large number of stings at once, which is a real possibility with a disturbed Hawaii yellowjacket nest.
Remote trailheads and upcountry areas mean longer transport times to a hospital on most islands. If anyone in your household carries an epinephrine auto-injector, bring it on hikes. See our wasp sting treatment guide and allergic reaction to wasp sting for full first aid detail.
Yes. Hawaii has introduced western yellowjackets and several Polistes paper wasp species, plus mud daubers, keyhole wasps, and more than a hundred endemic solitary wasp species. None of the social stinging species are native to the islands.
The western yellowjacket (Vespula pensylvanica). It nests underground or in wall voids, defends the nest aggressively, stings repeatedly, and can build unusually large colonies in Hawaii’s climate.
No. There are no established hornet species in Hawaii — no European hornets, no bald-faced hornets, and no northern giant “murder” hornets. Report any suspected sighting to 643-PEST.
Often not. Without a hard freeze, many colonies survive into a second or third year and continue growing, sometimes with multiple queens. This is why waiting out a nest works far less reliably in Hawaii than on the mainland.
There isn’t a sharply defined one. Nest founding peaks roughly February through April, colonies build through the middle of the year, and scavenging activity is usually heaviest from about August into October — but some level of activity continues year-round.
Yellowjackets are most abundant in cooler upcountry and higher-elevation areas — upcountry Maui and the Volcano and Waimea areas of Hawaiʻi Island are notably affected. Hot coastal areas across all islands tend to have fewer yellowjackets and more paper wasps and mud daubers.
Yes — the solitary ones. Hawaii’s endemic mason and potter wasps (including the genus Nesodynerus) number well over a hundred species found nowhere else. They are small, non-aggressive, and ecologically valuable, and should be left undisturbed.
Only a small, newly built, ground-reachable paper wasp comb, and only if no one in the household has a sting allergy. Yellowjacket nests, ground nests, wall-void nests, and anything large or high should go to a licensed pest control professional.
For a region-by-region overview of which wasps live where in the US, see our Wasps by State: Regional Identification & Seasonal Activity Guide. For species-by-species physical identification, see the Wasp Identification Guide.
Species guides for Hawaii’s wasps:
Nests, stings, and prevention:
Other Pacific and non-contiguous state guides: