The city’s deceitful insects
If once stung by a bee or hornet, you quickly learn to stay away from the black and yellow striped creatures. If you do not, you risk being stung and that hurts like crazy!
The animals also know this and this is why the bees and hornets have very few enemies in the nature. The bright black and yellow colours signal from far away that “I am so dangerous that I can behave any way I want to”. If these animals were not able to defend themselves, it would be good to wear colours so bright.
Several animals have, however, discovered that even though they are not really dangerous, they can still pretend. This is why they imitate the bees’ colours to trick their enemies into believing that they can sting – without actually being able to. Examples of such imposters are flower flies, wasp spiders, tachina flies, longhorn beetles and many other animals as they have black and yellow stripes or spots which from a distance make them look like bees or wasps.
Nevertheless, by practicing, it is possible to learn to tell them apart, but it does require that you stop and actually look at the animals. For example, bees and hornets always have wasp waists (even though it can be difficult to detect on bumblebees), four membrane-like wings and long antennas.