Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Stinging Bald-Faced Hornet

By: Tom Berg

Hornets!  Bald-Faced Hornets!  When some people hear those words, their first thought is to run!  But there is no need to fear bald-faced hornets in most cases.  That is, unless you or someone else disturbed their nest.  If the answer to that is yes, then running is a good idea!

Bald-faced hornets are a species of wasp, like the yellow jacket.  They are mostly black in color, with white markings on their face and head.  They also have three distinctive white stripes at the end of their body near their tail.  Like most other wasps, their wings are relatively small and thin, but they are still strong flyers.

Surprisingly, there are about 27,000 species of wasps in the world, and out of those, 22 species are classified as hornets.  The bald-faced hornet has many names, but some of the most common are white-faced hornet, white-tailed hornet, bald-faced wasp, bull wasp and blackjacket.  They can sting multiple times, mostly when defending their nest.  They can even spray venom from their stingers into the eyes of nest intruders like birds, lizards and mammals – and people!  The venom can cause temporary blindness, but it soon dissipates.

Bald-faced hornets build the familiar-looking football-shaped paper nest that hangs from a branch in a tree or large bush.  They live throughout most of the United States and southern Canada, although they are more common in the southeastern US.  There can be anywhere from a few hundred to several hundred hornets inside, so do not disturb their nest!

Believe it or not, bald-faced hornets are actually beneficial insects.  They hunt down and eat large numbers of harmful insects like aphids, flies, hornworms and other destructive caterpillars.  They eat these insect pests and feed vast quantities of them to their young, too.  They also pollinate a wide variety of flowers as they gather nectar and pollen during their daily foraging routines.

Bald-faced hornets are an important part of the ecosystem, and they are often eaten by larger predators like birds, spiders, reptiles and other predatory insects.  By the end of autumn, the old queen and all of the worker hornets within the nest die, and only new queens survive to overwinter and start a new nest and a new colony in the spring.  It’s the endless cycle of life!

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