Don’t Poke The Hornet’s Nest

3 Mar

I recently found an abandoned hornet’s nest and got some close-up, stacked, macro shots of the incredible structure. These photos are only small sections of what was an absolutely massive nest.

It amazes me to think that, with the amount of time and effort it must take to build these, they are essentially a one and done affair. Once the colony has hatched and leaves, that’s it, the nest has served its purpose.

Getting the opportunity to study the structure up close, you really appreciate the work that went into its construction. The entire nest is built out of the pulp from the wood that the hornets chew up. The fact that there are so many different coloured layers made me think about how far the hornets might travel to source the wood. Presumably each different colour would be from a different type of tree? I even saw some fairly bright green layers which might have come from painted signs or furniture? I wonder if each layer of colour is the work of one individual or whether small groups of hornets travel to the same source and work on the same specific area before the next group takes over?

There’s a lot of questions there and you may well say to yourself, well you’ve got the internet, why don’t you do some research and find out? Well when it comes to species like hornets, wasps, weevils etc, you have to fight your way through the proverbial blizzard of pages dedicated to the best methods to eradicate them. I feel like for every one interesting fact you can uncover about hornets, you’ve also unintentionally learnt what the best 10 products are to completely wipe out an entire nest, quickly and efficiently.

It very much reminds me of other animals like, spiders and adders when they are so vilified that it’s impossible to open people’s eyes to the facts or change misconceptions because of the absolute barrage of uninformed and negative press that clogs up any searches on these topics.