I chose to do my project on hornets because I think they are misunderstood animals. Most people think of a hornet as an animal that lives to do nothing except sting. Actually hornets are even shier than honey bees and will only attack when provoked. Hornets are very helpful because they are amazing pest controllers. Unlike bees hornets live for one season. The only wasps that survive through the winter are the baby queens who need no care through the winter. Unlike bees hornet queens do not kill the others, they simply send them on there way when they come out. After emerging a queen hornet will leave in search of a nesting site. Once they find a nesting site the queen will make a small nest herself out of pieces of wood pulp that they use there saliva to turn into a paper like substance. Then the queen will lay eggs and wait until they hatch. Once the eggs hatch they go through their metamorphosis state and emerge an adult hornet called workers. The workers go out in search of food. Afterwards they expand the nest as the queen lays eggs for “drones” which are the males of a hive whose only purpose is to mate with the queen. After they do they promptly die. Another purpose of hornets is nourishment. Some animals such as skunks, birds, and bears. Most of the time people think they are bees or mostly because that is the first thing that pops into some ones mind but there are a lot of differences such as hornets are bigger being about 45 centimeters long. When a bee stings you it leaves its stinger in you but hornets don’t lose there’s instead they sting you like 10 times then get bored and leave. Most people probably would think wasps make honey too but only bees do that. Hornets like I said before eat insects but they do it in a different way than you would think, instead of just chomping them down they dismember them and throw away the parts they don’t want like the head and wings. At night is when most people think you should take out a nest but there is one exception to this, the European hornet. Instead of all going back to the colony at night, these little guys are active all night long and in one colony there are about 1000 workers! Not many people know but the reason people have been seeing more hornets is because global warming is attracting them. Some hornets are extremely aggressive. Bees, other hornet species, and larger insects such as praying mantises are no match for the giant hornets, which often stalk their prey in relentless armies. Just one of these hornets can kill 40 European honeybees a minute; a handful of the creatures can slaughter 30,000 European honeybees within hours, leaving a trail of severed insect heads and limbs. Someone who is stung by the hornet and doesn’t receive proper treatment soon thereafter can die from the venom, which is powerful enough to disintegrate human flesh. About 40 people die each year after being stung by giant hornets, mainly as a result of an allergic reaction to the venom. European honeybees are a favorite target of the giant hornets. Commonly used by Japanese farmers, the honeybees are not native to Japan and have no natural defenses against an onslaught of giant hornets.

Once an enterprising hornet scouts out a bee colony, it marks the nest with a type of bodily chemical substance called a pheromone. Soon, a horde of giant hornets—each hornet five times larger than a European honeybee—arrives to decimate the colony.

The annual cycle of life and death begins anew each spring on the Japanese island of Honshu. As the cold weather fades, giant hornet queens awake from six months of hibernation. Inside, they carry the eggs of those who will be the hive’s workers and soldiers. Well that is it but this is only a small amount of information on hornets in fact there might even be some hornet species we haven’t discovered yet and I hope to be one of the people who finds a new species