A few weeks ago, when the girls and I were driving through the neighborhood, we found a hive of some sort just sitting in the road. We had "enjoyed" a couple days of rain and howling wind and so I figured it had been blown out of a tree. Not to miss an opportunity like this, I quickly pulled over. I found a long stick and poked at the hive...then I got brave enough to roll it with my foot...and since no angry swarms of flying insects came out to attack, I picked it up and put it in our trunk.
I told Steve about it and we slowly opened the trunk...still no swarming insects. So it sat outside for a couple of weeks while we waited for a nice day to dissect it.
Yesterday was dissection day!
First, we closely examined the outside "paper". It is mostly gray, but has stripes of other colors from where the insects used different types of materials to make their home. We also found a few leaves woven into the nest/hive.
Then, Steve cut it open with scissors and began revealing the structure inside. It was fascinating! Inside were four layers of what looked like wasp nests...the top one was pretty big and each one got slightly smaller. Each layer hung from the one above it by a paper "stem". We marveled at how they had built their structure. A few full grown, but very DEAD, insects were found inside. Then Steve cut apart the layers so we could take a closer look.
Most of the cells were empty, but we found some that had not opened. So Steve used an exacto knife to dissect further. The cells that were completely closed had immature insects in them...they were not as large as the others we had found and it appeared that their wings were not fully developed. We found some insects that were obviously ready to come out when they met their death...one had died while emerging...just his head was poking out of his cell...the girls thought he was funny :) After much dissecting and discussing, we put our hive/nest away and researched our observations.
I am so thankful for the internet...it made our search for "what exactly are these insects" very easy! By comparing our nest and insect samples to pictures on the internet, we quickly learned that we had found a hornet's nest...a bald-faced hornet's nest to be exact. We learned that these hornets can be very aggressive...glad they were all dead! We also learned that each hornet lives for only one season...they entire nest dies out after the first freeze. The next batch of hornets will build their own nest...they will not reuse an abandoned nest. Only a few young, pregnant queens will survive the winter. These young queens hibernate underground or in logs and trees and will come out in the spring to start the next life cycle. Sometimes it's good to be queen :)
And that, my friends, is your nature lesson for the day!
God bless~
Rach
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