David Lloyd, age 13, of Eugene, Oregon, for his question:
Do hornets desert their nest in the winter?
In summer, the hornet's nest hangs half hidden amid leafy boughs and the hot tempered hornets are ready to attack anyone who comes near. If you spot the big papery ball in summer, run don't walk out of range. Wait until winter, when it is safer, almost quite safe, to investigate.
A honeybee hive is occupied season after season. In winter, the bees stay inside, huddling together and feeding on stored honey. A few wasps of the tropics also store honey and survive the mild winter. But most colonies of wasps and waspy hornets begin and end their cycles with the summer season. Only a few young queens survive the winter, sheltering from the cold in cozy cracks and crevices. Sometimes one creeps into a barn or hides in a farm house attic.
Some spring, each surviving young hornet flies forth to start her new duties as queen mother of a new colony. She chooses a suitable spots high on a bough or down in a hollow in the ground. Then she chews wood to make a few papery cells and lays a few eggs. She feeds the larvae on chewed up insect meat and finds a little flower nectar to feed herself. The larvae become adult hornets and take over the duties of the nest and the young queen is freed to lay more eggs.
The first brood of hornets is small and weak. The later broods have more babysitters to tend them. They get more food and they grow bigger and stronger. As spring turns to summer, the strongest hornets take over the foraging duties. They bring home crops full of woody pulp, nectar for the nursemaids and chewed insect meat for the infant larvae.
The stay at homes use the woody pulp to build more cells for more eggs. The cells are made in neat layers. Each new layer is stuck formly under the last one. An outside shell of waterproof paper is built around the whole package. The queen may lay 25,000 eggs, though the workers live only a few weeks. As food gets more plentiful, the colony grows and each layer of cells is made bigger than the one above it. During the summer, the outside wall is torn down and enlarged time after time. At the height of the season, the nest may be inhabited by 5000 hornets.
In the fall, more young males and females are born and fewer workers. The young ones mate and then perish. As the cold weather approaches, the weary workers also perish and so does the tired old queen. The young queens go off to find winter shelter. The thousands of busy hornets that built and ran the neat waterproof nest have all departed. When winter comes, the wonderful paper nest is deserted.
Perhaps a few strangers find shelter inside the old nest. Now that the hot tempered hornets have departed, a timid bug may get up courage to tiptoe inside or it may be occupied by a bird, a mouse or some other small animal. And, once in a while, a young queen decides, to winter in the old nest rather than seek shelter elsewhere. She is very sleepy, but take, care even when investigating a deserted hornets' nest. If a young hornet queen is aroused, she is likely to prod you with her fiery stinger.