Help, wasps or bees?

[FuckYouRichardParker]

Just gone out and bushes round the door are covered in these. Are they wasps or bees? Scared to go back in garden!

Honey bee 🐝

Honey bees.

Don't worry, leave them to get on with it - they're not interested in you.

Are you sure? We had a wasps nest near there last year and same bushes were swarming with them.

Absolutely positive.

Wasps have a more vivid colour. Bees just look a bit softer. More yellow brown.

Thanks! I have a total fear of wasps. I was sitting out earlier and no insects. Just now, hundreds of them, out of nowhere! Exactly what happened last year with the wasps!

Anyone know what kind of plant it is? It's both green and variegated.

The leaves look like euonymus (eg 'emerald and gold') but I've never seen one flower like that. Hm - the ones I've got are euonymus fortunei, I've found images of euonymus japonica with flowers like that.

Thank you Errolthedragon I think it is an euonymus japonicus.

Does it really matter?
Wasps are very useful pollinators too you know, they are valuable predators too.
And for what it is worth, I have never been stung by a wasp, but I have been stung by a honey bee!

You can sometimes tell by the way they fly. Bees seem a bit slower and ungainly. Also as said above they tend to be brown and black rather than bright yellow.

Well, one way to find out for sure would be to have a picnic in your garden.

Know your bees!

They could also be hoverflies, which are completely harmless but look like bees/wasps

The clue is in the name with hoverflies.

It's both green and variegated. If it has branches with just plain green leaves, these will grow more vigorously than branches with green and gold leaves (there'll be more photosynthesis going on), and will eventually take over. So if you like the green and gold leaves, prune out any pure green leaved branches.