Bald-faced hornet
The bald-faced hornet is a black wasp with a white face and three white stripes at the end of its body. It lives in a big family and builds a grey paper nest that hangs from trees and bushes. The nest can be as big as a basketball, or even bigger.
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Fun facts
It makes paper by chewing wood fibres and mixing them with its spit.
Its nest can be up to 58 centimetres long, with many layers of six-sided rooms inside.
One nest can hold 400 to 700 workers.
A single queen starts each new nest in spring and raises the first workers all by herself.
Its nests have been found from just 30 centimetres up to 20 metres above the ground.
Most asked questions about Bald-faced hornet
?What does a bald-faced hornet nest look like?
It is a grey, egg-shaped paper ball hanging from a tree, a bush or the side of a building.
?How big is a bald-faced hornet?
About 19 millimetres long, bigger than its yellowjacket cousins.
Myth buster
Myth: It is a true hornet.
Truth: No. Even though it is called a hornet, it is really a kind of yellowjacket wasp. True hornets belong to a different group.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dolichovespula maculata
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1763
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- White-faced hornet, Bald-faced aerial yellowjacket, Blackjacket, Bull wasp
Where the facts come from
- Dolichovespula maculata (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 Rhododendrites. 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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