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llurgy

Hornets?? Not sure

llurgy
18 years ago

We have some strange behaviour on a few native trees in our back yard.

We noticed several days ago that there were a large number of 'hornets' populating 3 specific trees in our yard.

They seem from a distance to be more of a shape of a bumble bee but have a whitish head and just the tip of their tails being white, the rest seems to be black and shiny. Would these be bald faced hornet workers??

Their behaviour......wierd....they just seem to be populating these 3 trees in a very unorganized manner....they dont seem to go anywhere, just ambling around the tree's trunks, the main concentrations about four foot up the trunks. We have watched activity for about 30 minutes at a time, but they dont go anywhere, just buzzing up and down the trunks lazily and aimlessly. We have tried to locate a nest in one of these three trees but have been unsuccessful, there doesnt seem to be anything resembling any kind of nest and the wasps/bees are not giving any clues.

Usually when you locate lots of activity you can narrow the nest down by following the wasps as they usually fly into the nest when they get near it.....case of ground bees, there is always bees flying in and out.

In this case, the bees/wasps are exhibiting behaviour more akin to yellow jackets around a trash can, only they are doing it on these 3 trees.

Any insight out there? The colony such as it is is far enough away not to cause any immediate problems, this is more of a curiosity enquiry more than anything, it's bugging me :) LOL

Mandy

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