We grow a lot of of flowers. Like a LOT. Multiple garden beds of pollinator-friendly plants. As a result we have birds, butterflies, moths, bees and a little less fortunately, wasps. We've become fairly used to our bees buzzing closely or even landing on us from time to time. Bees rarely sting. And even the wild bumblebees are rarely aggressive and they are large enough that we really don't need to worry about accidentally bumping them.
Wasps are another story. In August and September we tend to have a lot of them around. This year in particular has been really intense when it comes to wasps. We have had two ground nests in the middle of grassy areas and a couple of nests in walls of outbuildings as well. I am quite sure that we'll find some papery wasps nests in the trees when the leaves fall off as well.
So after probably almost a decade of not being stung by a wasp of wild bumblebee, I was stung twice in one week. Not fair! But as I mentioned, we have a lot of nests. I was mowing and managed to run the mower tire right through a yellow jacket nest and was weeding when I upset a bumblebee nest under the Blazing Stars. I was almost stung earlier in the week but managed to backpedal away from the angry buzz of another bumblebee nest under an old stump. We see wasps and bumblebees all over our flowers and just give them some space and we've never had any trouble.
We do love our flowers and our pollinators, we really do, but the humid hot weather in the Northern Midwest this year seems to have multiplied some of our less desirable pollinators (AKA Wasps). And they are aggressive this year! We hope to see them decline a little late in September so we can stop listening for that angry sound they make, right before they sting you.