North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[hans brinkmann <hans-brinkmann@t-online.de>]

Hallo Rivka, Jerry and Mathew,

it's been a pleasure to read your interesting comments!
Let me just add:
At Europe many garden owners/fruit-farmers do hang artificial housings especially for hornets:

Just for their protection AND to have less unwanted insects at their gardens!
Wasps and hornets do eat usually only insects - only at a very small percentage - when they are older - they prefer sweet juice.
At small Germany we have more than 550 different species of wild-bees, 11 different wasps resp. hornets and only one honey-bee.
Some wasps do eat also pollen, some can even collect pollen and many do also pollinate flowers.
Hornets do fly 24 h and hunt more than 20 h per day! Hornets do never sleep (only a kind of half-minute-sleep)!!!

ciao
Hans


Jwlehman@aol.com schrieb:

I consider the bald faced hornets my friends. On several occasions I observed them taking small horse flies from off my cattle's undersides, eating off their heads then flying off with the body. What called my attention to that act was seeing Bald Faced Hornets flying around under the cattle. I asked myself, Why? So I watched and then made the above observation and after that saw it many times.
Once while looking out the kitchen window one landed on the glass pain and I watched him from mere inches away eat off the head then fly away with the body. Have seen no indication they take the bodies into the nest. They land on fence posts and scrape off cellulose fiber I assume to use in making their nests. If one looks at the nest shell one will see the different colors due to different wood fibers.

Had one nest hanging 5 feet off the ground in an apple tree in the front yard. I spent a lot of time watching the nest activity from maybe 5 feet away. Very interesting. Once when I got too close, maybe 2 feet one gave me a warning by brushing against my cheek. So I backed up a few feet and continued to watch. Never was stung by one. They seem to me to be very docile 

In this area the weather lore is: The higher the nests, the deeper the snow the coming winter.

There is nothing to it. First, the hornets don't winter over in the nests. Second, I've seen very high and very low nests the same summer and not far apart.

Jerry
Indiana, 5b




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