  The near infrared (1-2um) and the thermal infrared (3-25um) trace many of the
environments in which masers are thought to reside, including shocks, outflows,
accretion disks, and the dense medium near protostars. After a number of recent
surveys it has been found that there is a higher detection rate of mid-IR
emission towards masers than cm radio continuum emission from UC HII regions,
and that the mid-IR emission is actually more closely cospatial to the maser
locations. A high percentage of water and methanol masers that are not
coincident with the UC HII regions in massive star forming regions are likely
to be tracing outflows and extremely young high mass stars before the onset of
the UC HII region phase. After a decade of groundwork supporting the hypothesis
that linarly distributed class II methanol masers may generally trace accretion
disks around young massive stars, compelling evidence is mounting that these
masers may generally be associated with outflows instead. Substantiation of
this claim comes from recent outflow surveys and high angular resolution mid-IR
imaging of the maser environments.
