Under the eave of a garage on Woodside Drive, bald-faced hornets have built a large gray paper nest that looks for all the world like a gargoyle.
Holly Hoffman’s article in the January 2022 issue of the Lumberton Chronicle explained that bald-faced hornets “are a type of yellow jacket. But luckily for us, they feed their developing young on their relatives and flies … [including] spotted lantern flies. The adults are also pollinators and so should be considered garden friends. They attack and sting only when their nest is threatened or disturbed accidentally.”
Normally hornet nests hang from the underside of a tree branch and are more or less hidden until the fall, after the tree loses its leaves. But the hornet queen who started this nest apparently wanted to show off her family’s artwork.
Under the eave of a garage on Woodside Drive, bald-faced hornets have built a large gray paper nest that looks for all the world like a gargoyle.
Holly Hoffman’s article in the January 2022 issue of the Lumberton Chronicle explained that bald-faced hornets “are a type of yellow jacket. But luckily for us, they feed their developing young on their relatives and flies … [including] spotted lantern flies. The adults are also pollinators and so should be considered garden friends. They attack and sting only when their nest is threatened or disturbed
accidentally.”
Normally hornet nests hang from the underside of a tree branch and are more or less hidden until the fall, after the tree loses its leaves. But the hornet queen who started this nest apparently wanted to show off her family’s artwork.
— Photo by Robert Koch; text by Holly Hoffman and Ann Campbell