This is a hornet's nest! I spotted it yesterday while I was sitting on a lawn chair resting from pulling weeds in the garden. I was staring off into space and evidently stared off at a large rhododendron growing in the very top terrace of my flower beds and just adjacent to the back end of our carport. These first two pictures are taken from inside the carport using the close-up lens. Can you see three hornets in the top picture? We've had hornet's nests before but have seen them only when the leaves have fallen from the trees and the hornets have flown off in the late fall.
So I recognized this for what it was--a hornet's nest! Right in my very own backyard--well my side flower bed, that is!
At first, I thought it was abandoned, but then today saw black insects flying to and fro. I began snapping pictures with my camera.
The top photo shows the inside of the nest. The camera lens did not capture the dark color of the inside of the cavity so you need to realize that the three insects are crawling around a cavity that goes deeper and deeper.
The middle photo shows only one hornet (it may be the Queen) but if this nest is like ones described on hornet websites, deep in that cavity there are covered egg cells and larvae going through one of five stages of metamorphoses. When complete, they turn into worker hornets who chew up wood pulp and with their saliva turn it into a paste that they add to this huge sac hanging from my rhododendron shrub. In the first two photos you can see how the sac is hanging from a branch--it is on the right hand side of the hornet's nest and is yellow.
On the last photo, below, which is the nest taken from its backside view (I'm standing on the garden's concrete walkway) you can see this same yellow branch but it's on the left hand side of the nest now. Notice how the Queen, the only one living to get this nest started, fastened the nest securely to the branch by wrapping the branch round and round with this wood-saliva mixture. When there are enough worker hornets to forage and feed all the growing larvae population, the Queen will be enclosed in this paper-paste sac and her only function will be to reproduce. By the end of the summer, the hornet colony will have grown to house hundreds (500-700) of hornets including the new Queens, the only ones who have the ability to hibernate and even create their own anti-freeze-like chemical. The Old Queen will die--long live the new Queens!
Then next spring, the cycle of life will begin anew! Our problem now is convincing our yard helper that we have to let these hornets survive. He will want to spray them, but they will kill thousands of flies this summer which make up 95% of their diet. They are far enough away from the walkway that we should be safe enough. Hornets are non-aggressive and attack only if their nest is intruded upon.
The way it's tucked into that rhodie shrub, I don't think the dogs will disturb it, and I know Rocky and I sure won't!
