Granby CT, What Wasp/Hornet is this?
When I visited my parents for Mother's Day we noticed a truly impressively sized wasp(hornet?) for New England, just moving slow near mom's raspberry bushes (it had dropped in temp from rain earlier so that was likely why)
My parents don't use pesticides or herbicides on their yard or their giant garden so whenever I visit in the warm months I get to see a lot of odd bees and wasps hanging out on random flowers (garlic flowers actually do smell like garlic which is odd). Ive seen orchard bees, sand bees, weird little blue black ones, etc.
This hornet/wasp was oddly large for here, like give a carpenter bee a run for its money. At least an inch long, like 3x the size of a regular yellow jacket.
My older sister thought it was a yellow jacket but the patterns don't look right to me, too much yellow in the pattern, plus the size. Could it just be a yellow jacket queen?
We of course left them be to go do whatever but I am wondering what kind of wasp/hornet they are