Asian hornet
The Asian hornet is a big dark wasp with bright yellow legs, a yellow face and one orange stripe on its back end. It comes from Southeast Asia but now also lives in much of Europe. It is famous for hunting honeybees in front of their hives.
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Fun facts
Its nest is made of paper and shaped like a giant egg, at least 50 centimetres long.
It often builds a first nest low in a bush and later moves to a new nest high up in a tree.
In Asia the honeybees fight back: they squeeze around a hornet in a ball and shiver until it gets too hot for the hornet.
Each hunting hornet guards its own little patch of air in front of the hive and chases other hornets away.
Only the young queens survive the winter, sleeping until spring.
Most asked questions about Asian hornet
?How big is an Asian hornet?
Workers are about 20 millimetres long and queens about 30 millimetres, smaller than the European hornet.
?Why are Asian hornets a problem?
They hunt honeybees in front of their hives, which is bad for beekeepers.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespa velutina
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Europe
- Also known as
- Yellow-legged hornet, Asian predatory wasp
Where the facts come from
- Asian hornet (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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