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It wasn't the road commission performing one of the never ending highway maintenance projects, which plague us all summer long. It was an architectural endeavor being created by a hard working group of insects. A young queen bald-faced hornet and her (at that time) small band of workers were at the early stages of building a nest in one of our maple trees that line our driveway.

If my wife and I were like "normal" people, we would have run up to the local hardware store, purchased several cans of wasp and hornet spray, and then waited till dusk and sprayed the heck out of that small band of intruders before someone got stung.

Luckily for the hornets, my wife and I are not normal. We are nature lovers. We enjoyed watching those hard working creatures do what Mother Nature programmed them to do, thousands of years ago. They entertained us for the better half of the summer on our daily walk to the mailbox. We would check their progress and marvel at how the daily temperature changes affect the activity level in and around the nest. Not unlike human construction workers, on cool rainy days there wasn't much outside activity, but on warm sunny days, they made amazing progress.

It saddens me to think that after all of that hard work, the nest will sit empty as winter nears, because the inhabitants will have come to the end of their life cycle as Mother Nature intended. You see, unlike bees, wasps and hornets build annual colonies whose sole purpose is to rear new young queens, which are the sole survivors of the colony. These young queens are already bred when they leave the nest in the fall. They choose not to hibernate in the painstakingly created nest, but rather in hollow trees or underground, until the warming spring sun prompts them to repeat the cycle of life once again.

Bald-faced hornets are not really hornets at all. They are wasps belonging to the genus called Yellowjackets. They have a reputation for being aggressive, but my wife and I beg to differ. My wife often stands within several feet of the entrance to the nest, just to get a close look at the activity. I choose to stay about ten feet away, to allow them unrestricted flight paths in and out of the nest. I have also encountered the bald-faced hornets when I'm picking up pears that have fallen from our trees. Again they showed no signs of aggression, a simple wave of the hand and they would leave the pear they were dining on and allow me to toss it in my bucket.

Although I will admit that I always leave several pears on the ground so that they have access to an easy meal. I guess I'm an old softy when it comes to Mother Nature's little creations. Besides fallen fruit, Bald-faced Hornets dine on insects such as flies, caterpillars, moths and even other Yellowjackets. They also enjoy the nectar from flowers and, in early autumn, they can be seen working the fields of flowering Goldenrod.

The nest constructed by the bald-faced hornets is made of a paperlike material produced from a combination of wood pulp and saliva from the workers. The nests, which are shaped like upside down teardrops, are often larger than basketballs. The thick outer shell protects the inner nest which is composed of three or four tiers of combs, similar to that of a honey bee. Another similarity to the honey bee is the social order of the colony. Like the honey bee, the unfertilized females are the workers, the fertilized females are the queens and the sole responsibility of the male Bald-faced Hornet is mating. Again, like the male honey bees (drones), the male bald-faced hornets have no stingers.

The main difference between the two species, is that the entire honey bee colony lives in the hive all winter, huddling together to produce heat (they do not hibernate) but the only survivors to see the warmth of spring from a bald-faced hornet colony are the young fertilized queens. The workers and drones end their life cycle in the fall.

If you should be fortunate enough to spot one of these nests, take the time to admire the workmanship that goes into building it. But to avoid conflict with its residents, do it from a safe distance.

The only conflict that will happen around here is determining whether the, soon to be empty, nest will decorate my wife's sewing room or my home office!

Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated at outdrguy@avci.net.