Pretty big hornet

J

joe o'hara

New Member
Jan 1, 2013
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With Asian Giant Hornets in the news, this is about the last thing I needed to see buzzing around behind the curtains in my front window this morning. I'm guessing it might be a yellowjacket queen-- anyone care to make an ID?

Note, I have it tied down to the card with a piece of white wire, so that white line at the top of its abdomen is not part of the insect.
hornet_dorsal.jpg
 

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O

old jersey girl

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Jul 26, 2017
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south nj near Delaware bayshore
joe o'hara said:
With Asian Giant Hornets in the news, this is about the last thing I needed to see buzzing around behind the curtains in my front window this morning. I'm guessing it might be a yellowjacket queen-- anyone care to make an ID?

Note, I have it tied down to the card with a piece of white wire, so that white line at the top of its abdomen is not part of the insect.View attachment 13643
Click to expand...


I'm thinking it was already dead when you lassoed it?!
 
J

joe o'hara

New Member
Jan 1, 2013
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old jersey girl said:
I'm thinking it was already dead when you lassoed it?!
Click to expand...
You betcha. I may be stupid, but I'm not crazy.

Considering how common yellowjackets are in this area, a queen was the first thing I thought of. I could not find a reference on the internet that gave a good description of their size. This one is about twice the body length of your typical yellowjacket, and my impression was that queens were larger, but maybe not that much larger. So I had some doubts at first.

I will tentatively relax thinking that we have not been invaded by a race of excessively large hornets. So far.
 
J

joe o'hara

New Member
Jan 1, 2013
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Upon doing a bit more research, I think that this was actually a European Hornet (Vespa crabro), based on the dorsal markings and its size (way too big to be a yellowjacket queen, and the wrong color and too small to be a Giant Asian Hornet (Vespa maricopa). According to the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hornet) they were introduced here in the 19th century. I'm not sure we really needed another hornet, but we seem to have got them anyway.
 
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