Where does the queen sleep away the winter chill? This particular one was nestled inside a dead pine log on the forest floor. She was perfectly safe and content -- at least until we came along :( When we rolled the log to check for salamanders, it broke apart and revealed itself as the winter home of this queen bald-faced hornet (Vespula maculata). She mated in the late summer or early fall and now waits patiently for the warmth of spring when she will emerge and begin a new colony.
Luckily, we were able to piece the log back together so perhaps we didn't do any lasting damage to this sleeping beauty -- we'll keep an eye on things throughout the rest of the winter though, just to be sure.
3 comments:
Few things worse than having your log rolled over when you're trying to saw logs. Sleep on little buddy, sleep on.
Why does she look so angry?
I mean, yes I understand the whole disturbing sleep thing, but seriously, our minds are coded to understand human body language, so the question becomes:
do we interpret her insect body language correctly because our brains have ways of interpreting a kindof "universal" code?
or, do we simply graft our emotions onto other creatures?
SQMOJO
SQ, I believe it must be the latter. She never even twitched when we disturbed her rotting log, so I doubt she was angry as we perceive it.
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