There are so many breeds of hornet and wasp and they all have a duality of sorts between each other. The wasp and the hornet can either be a solo insect or it can be a colony insect. It generally depends on the breed of hornet or wasp but some are capable of doing both. The wasp is less prone to solitary life though the infamous paper wasp and its brother the bald-faced wasp (often mistaken for a hornet) are exclusively solitary. This means if you have these types of wasps in your home there is a good chance they will not be a serious threat and their nest is small enough to be relocated instead of destroyed. Now the defining trait between all wasps and hornets is that in a colony like nests the queen is the sole survivor. This can change if the insects find a warm place to live through the winter which allows them to build a very large nest that is very hard to destroy. The queen also produces a group of new queen who also survives. They all travel out of the nest before the frost and find a place to hibernate. They are already pregnant with eggs so when spring comes they immediately find a place to make a small pocket like a nest and lay her new sterile female workers to start a new nest. As the fall approaches the queen will again birth fertile eggs of males and females. The females will mate with the males and become queens in their own right, the rest will die off and the circle of life continues.
If you suspect hornet or wasp presence, do not hesitate to contact Wasp Control Hamilton for a complete bed bug eradication.
A similarity to the hornet is quite shocking, but when you consider that all these insects evolved alongside the bee it makes sense that they all follow the same basic life cycle. Now the great black hornet is one of the few that can venture into the world as a solitary hornet. They often build paper-like spherical nests in the ground in rodent burrows like yellowjackets but the nest is a single layer of paper and filled with honeycomb-like structures that allow for the laying of eggs. This process is like a paper wasp in many ways.
Most hornets create the well known oblong oval like shaped nest out of wood or paper fiber and saliva. They have nests of up to fifty thousand hornets and are incredibly dangerous. They can cause massive damage to a person if a swarm attacks or if one hornet stings a person with allergies. They, too, have a queen that lays her eggs and is cared for and protected by the workers. It is also important to note that a hornet is a type of wasp.