The Living Habits of Hornets and How They Differ from Honeybees

Hornets, also known as wasps, horse bees, yellow jackets and so on, are insects with a wide distribution and a great many species, and they will attack in swarms when provoked. So, what living habits do hornets have? What is the difference between hornets and honeybees?

1. What living habits do hornets have?

Hornets are a group of insects with social behavior. Species of the subfamily Eumeninae have no nest in normal times; when laying eggs, the female builds a mud cell or chooses a suitable bamboo tube and lays her eggs inside, at the same time storing the larvae of other insects or spiders that have been caught and paralyzed by stinging. One cell holds one egg, and each is sealed separately. The larvae that hatch from the eggs feed on the stored prey, and after pupating and emerging as adults they bite through the nest opening and fly out. Other species of hornets build a nest and live in it for their whole lives. The colony contains a queen, workers and drones. The queen is a female that mated and was fertilized by a drone after the previous autumn; she stores the sperm in a spermatheca and uses it in batches during that year. The drone dies shortly after mating. As the weather gradually turns cold, the fertilized females leave the nest one after another to seek wind-sheltered places such as wall crevices and haystacks, and they huddle together to overwinter. In the spring of the following year, the surviving females disperse from the cluster and go their separate ways, each finding a suitable place to build a nest and lay eggs. The fertilized eggs they lay develop into females, and the unfertilized eggs develop into drones. As the number of workers increases, the nest gradually expands, and the workers are responsible for building the nest and rearing the larvae.

2. The difference between hornets and honeybees

1. Hornets and honeybees have different feeding habits

Hornets and honeybees also differ greatly in their eating habits. Honeybees are plant-eating insects that feed on pollen; they are vegetarian, and in the process of collecting pollen they play a role in pollinating flowers. Hornets have complex feeding habits: besides sucking nectar, the adults are also predatory, and caterpillars and small green worms on trees are all targets for them. Since the prey of hornets are all pests, in this respect they, like honeybees, are beneficial insects.

2. Hornet nests and honeybee nests are made of different materials

Hornet nests and honeybee nests are made of different materials. The hornet nest is a paper nest, while the honeybee nest is a wax nest. In terms of material, the honeybee nest is clearly of better quality than that of the hornet.

3. Hornets are more bad-tempered than honeybees

Both hornets and honeybees have the habit of living in groups. Because honeybees are mostly kept by humans, one hive can hold tens of thousands of honeybees, whereas hornets are mostly wild. The yellow jacket nests that are found are mostly only about the size of a fist, and a nest can house roughly one to two hundred yellow jackets. Although they have social habits, they are also hostile to outsiders; members that blunder in will be attacked by the whole group and killed. Hornets have a very strong instinct to protect their young and their nest, and they are more bad-tempered and more aggressive.

4. A honeybee dies after stinging, but a hornet does not

The stinger of a hornet is slender and can be withdrawn smoothly after stinging a person. Each time after stinging, its “combat power” weakens, but after resting for a while it recovers, and this poses no threat to its life. Honeybees are not so lucky: the stinger of a honeybee has barbs, and after stinging a person the stinger stays stuck in the person's skin and cannot be pulled out. The stinger of a honeybee is connected to its internal organs, and after stinging, the internal organs are pulled out along with the stinger. Therefore, when a honeybee stings a person it pays with its life; it can sting only once in its lifetime, and it dies very soon after stinging.

The above is our introduction to the living habits of hornets and the differences between them and honeybees. Do you understand it all now?