Hornet

• A colony can reach 400 to 1,000 individuals at its late-summer peak.
• It eats other large insects such as beetles, wasps, moths and dragonflies, supplemented with fallen fruit and sap.
• Unlike most wasps, it can fly and hunt at night.
• comportamientoFor all its size and reputation, it is generally less aggressive than smaller wasps and only attacks in earnest if its nest is directly threatened.
• It has a far worse reputation than it deserves. It is markedly less aggressive than the German wasp and its venom is no more toxic, though the sting hurts more because of the size of the stinger.
• It flies at night, something exceptional among social wasps, and is drawn to light, which explains many household encounters.
• It is a voracious predator of other insects, including flies, wasps and grasshoppers, and in a garden it proves beneficial.
• The colony is annual: it dies in autumn and only the mated queens survive.
• In Germany it has been protected by law since 1987 and destroying a nest without authorisation is punishable — a rare case of legal protection for an insect regarded as a pest.
• It is being displaced in some areas by the invasive Asian hornet, Vespa velutina.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Woodland, tree hollows and buildings across Europe; introduced to North America

Birth weight

Egg laid in a cell of the colony

Size at birth

A larva fed by the workers inside the cell

Sexual maturity

The new queens reach breeding maturity after hibernating over winter

Gestation / incubation

Complete egg-larva-pupa-adult development over several weeks

Litter / clutch size

Hundreds to thousands of eggs laid by the queen over the season

Sources consulted: Dimensions.com · Buglife · Animal Kingdom · BugBrief · Spiderzoon · Wasp-Removal.com · iNaturalist · Animalia.bio · Springer (captive rearing study) · Atlas de Animales, ficha Avispon europeo · ficha de especie de Vespa crabro

Best time: The queen mated the previous autumn emerges in April or May and founds the nest alone; the first workers appear around June and in July and August the colony grows to 300-700 workers, with maxima of 1,000. The nest reaches its fullest development in September in southern countries and the whole colony dies with the first frosts, except the young mated queens