I don't know about the beetle, but what Moose says works for me. I don't know if the yellow jacket was already dead or the Box Elder killed it. There were actually three of them feasting on the jacket at one time.

I use a Nikon300 camera body. The macro lens used was a Nikon 100mm macro.

The bees come out of a crack in the limb and at times I had the lens within 8-12" of the opening. Suprisingly,I never got stung nor did I think I was bothering the bees, at least I hope not.