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Bald-faced hornets
are common in both wooded and urban
areas. Queens start a new nest each
spring after the weather warms up in
late April or May. The queen finds loose
bark, and other paper strips to start a
small nest into which she places her
eggs. She adds saliva to the paper bark
and forms a smooth "carton."
Inside the carton are horizontal layers
of comb or hornet cells divided into
circular platforms. The outer carton
shell is very thin. This means that if
this nest is accidentally damaged from
the outside by an animal, the paper
covering is easily stripped away and a
large number of angry, aggressive wasps
fly directly toward the intruder and
begin to sting. Since the sting is not
barbed, a single hornet can deliver a
series of painful stings. It is the
venom in the sting that is the cause of
the pain. Once a victim is stung, the
best response is to distance oneself
from the hornet nest as quickly as
possible. In other words, "Run like
hell." Multiple stings often occur close
to a nest.
I have been stung multiple times by the
Eastern Yellowjacket - Vespula
maculifrons, but never by
the bald-faced hornet. Of course, I was
engaged in aggressive behavior toward
their nest - I was trying to destroy it.
I have been around thousands of
bald-faced hornets in the wild, and they
pay no attention to me whatsoever.
Since there is always a danger from
anaphylactic shock from the venom of a
hornet, it is good policy to leave pest
control of colonies to a professional.
Try to find hornet nests as soon as
possible in the spring and summer
because they only become larger and more
aggressive with time. At the end of the
season, the carton nest often remains
hanging from a tree but the workers have
all died out and the newly mated queens
have left the nest to over-winter behind
the bark of trees.
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These hornets are voracious goldenrod pollen
consumers. Baldfaced hornets are black and
white, heavy-bodied wasps about 1/2 - 3/4 inch long.
They usually build exposed, grey nests in trees or
shrubs. Occasionally, they will build nests under
roof overhangs, in attics, crawlspaces and wall
voids, or under decks or porches. The nests are
constructed of a paper-like material formed from
chewed wood, and may exceed the size of a
basketball. These hornets are extremely quick-moving
and wary.
Life cycle: In spring , the
queens emerge from diapause and build small nests consisting of a
few paper cells. 1 egg is laid in each cell. When the eggs hatch the
female hunts other insects to feed to the larvae (although the queen
pictured here devoured this moth herself and carried nothing home
for the kids, so to speak). When larvae are fully grown, they spin
silk cocoons inside their cells and pupate into adult wasps. The
wasps that emerge from the cells are all sterile female workers,
which then take over nest building and foraging duties. Near the end
of the summer, female larvae are fed greater amounts of food, which
allows them to develop into queens, with complete reproductive
systems. At the same time, the queen lays unfertilized eggs, which
develop into male wasps. The males mate with the fertile females,
and the colony breaks up with the onset of autumn. The fertilized
females overwinter and the males die.
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