Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Yellowjacket
A boldly striped black-and-yellow social wasp with a smooth, shiny body and a fast, darting flight, often noticed hovering around food and sugary drinks in late summer.
wasp
Sawfly
A wasp relative that never stings, best known for its caterpillar-like larvae that strip leaves from roses, pines, and other garden plants in tidy rows.
wasp
Yellow Jacket
A smooth-bodied, boldly banded black-and-yellow wasp with a narrow waist, often seen hovering aggressively around outdoor food and sugary drinks in late summer.
wasp
Velvet Ant
A densely fuzzy, brightly colored insect that looks like an oversized ant but is actually a wingless female wasp, instantly recognizable by its thick coat of red, orange, black, or white hair.
wasp
Mason Bee
A compact, metallic blue-black bee that nests in existing narrow cavities and seals its brood cells with mud, prized as one of the most efficient early-spring pollinators of fruit trees.
bee
Horse Fly Larva
Hidden in the wet mud along pond and stream margins, the horse fly larva is a tapered, tough-skinned predator that hunts other small soil and mud-dwelling invertebrates before eventually transforming into the familiar biting fly.
aquatic-insect
Hornet
A large, robust social wasp with a reddish-brown and yellow patterned body, notably bigger than yellowjackets, building enclosed papery nests often high in tree cavities or wall voids.
wasp
Bald-faced Hornet
A black-and-white social wasp, actually a type of yellowjacket rather than a true hornet, best known for building large, football-shaped gray paper nests suspended from tree branches or eaves.
wasp
Cuckoo Bee
A slender, wasp-like bee that lacks pollen-carrying hairs because it never gathers its own pollen, instead sneaking into the nests of other solitary bees to lay eggs that hatch and consume the host's food stores.
bee
Harvester Ant
A large, industrious desert ant that clears a bare, sunburned disk of ground around its nest entrance while collecting and storing seeds by the thousands.
ant
Crane Fly Larva
Thick-skinned and worm-like, the crane fly larva, often called a leatherjacket, burrows through wet mud and decaying vegetation at the edges of ponds and streams, breaking down plant material as it grows.
aquatic-insect
Fire Ant Queen
The reproductive powerhouse of a fire ant colony, noticeably larger than the reddish worker ants and equipped with wings before she sheds them to found a new nest.
ant
Leafcutter Bee
A stout, dark-bodied bee best known not for how it looks but for the neat, circular or oval notches it cuts from leaves, which it uses to line and seal its nest cells.
bee
Eastern Subterranean Termite
A pale, soft-bodied social insect that lives in vast underground colonies and builds mud tubes to reach and feed on wood cellulose, including structural timber.
other
Weaver Ant
A tree-dwelling ant that builds its nest by stitching living leaves together with silk produced by its own larvae, forming elaborate arboreal colonies defended fiercely by its workers.
ant
Fire Ant
A small reddish-brown ant that builds loose, crater-less dirt mounds in sunny open turf and mobilizes large numbers of workers rapidly when the nest is disturbed.
ant
Squash Vine Borer
A day-flying, wasp-mimicking moth whose orange fuzzy hind legs and metallic wings make it easy to mistake for a wasp as it darts around squash vines.
moth
Wool Carder Bee
A stocky, yellow-and-black solitary bee named for its habit of scraping soft plant fibers from fuzzy leaves to line its nest, with territorial males that aggressively patrol and defend flower patches.
bee
Army Ant
A nomadic predator that never builds a permanent nest, instead forming temporary living bivouacs from its own linked bodies and sweeping through the forest floor in massive predatory raids.
ant
Non-Biting Midge Larva (Bloodworm)
Wriggling through soft bottom mud in dense colonies, the bloodworm gets its striking red color from a specialized blood pigment that lets it survive in oxygen-poor water where few other insects can.
aquatic-insect
Soft Tick
A wrinkled, leathery, bean-shaped tick that hides by day in nests and cracks, emerging briefly at night to feed and then vanish again.
arachnid
Hoverfly
A slender, bee- or wasp-patterned fly known for its remarkable ability to hover motionless in midair before darting suddenly to a new flower.
fly
Bird Mite
A minute, pale to reddish mite that lives among feathers and nesting material of wild and domestic birds, sometimes dispersing into nearby buildings when nests are abandoned.
arachnid
Black Garden Ant
A familiar small, glossy black ant that forms visible foraging trails across patios and garden paths and nests beneath stones, pavers, and lawns.
ant