Field Guide

Many apid bees are well-known. This family includes the familiar honeybee, bumblebees, and carpenter bees, plus many that are less well-known. With few exceptions, most of Missouri's apid bees are native, solitary species.

House crickets are probably native to Eurasia but are found nearly worldwide, having traveled the globe with people. Unlike most other field crickets in our area, they are tan and brown instead of glossy black.

Horntails look a lot like wasps but have a taillike spine that projects from the tip of the abdomen. Their cylindrical bodies also lack the narrow waist so common in wasps.

Spider wasps in genus Entypus are bluish black and usually have some amount of amber color on their dark, smoky wings. Some species have bright yellow antennae.

The dotted wolf spider has a solid brown stripe running down the middle of the abdomen, seen from above. Like other wolf spiders, females have strong maternal instincts, carrying their spiderlings around on their back until they can be on their own.

The rabid wolf spider, despite its scary name, is harmless to people and is absolutely not rabid. It commonly hides in leaf litter and sometimes gets into houses.

The European hornet is a large, nonnative hornet that was introduced to New York in the mid-1800s. They now occur across most of the eastern United States, including Missouri. People may misidentify them as the highly publicized, so-called murder hornets.