If the oversupply of Angelkeep hornets are not gone by the end of the week, they will soon be dead.
Only the fertile females somehow manage to live through the winter. In spring they began building their own nest, raised the first batch of youngin’s, and they in turn enlarged the paper home. Usually nests were found high in a tree.
Angelkeep discovered over the past two months that yellow jackets and blackjackets equally love a generic brand of grape jelly and orange halves placed in the oriole feeder. Blackjackets, like their cousin of the yellow variety, could get quite aggressive. They became noted for an ability to sting rapidly, multiple times, especially when defending a nest.
Blackjacket became a common name used by some. The most frequently used name, hornet, cannot be correct if found in Indiana. Hornets do not thrive as Hoosiers. These frequently seen, and called hornets, were more descriptively revealed through another common name. Bald-faced hornet. Pure white markings against a dark black background give the insect that name, although bionomically called Dolichovespula maculate since 1763.
The bald part of the common name, derived from the word piebald, a visual effect of white spots appearing on a black animal. This occurs on horses, dogs, and even deer, although deer are seldom, or never, black, but piebald with a brown color.
The thorax, tail tip of the abdomen, and legs displayed white markings quite striking in appearance, if it were not for the nasty personality of this white-faced hornet, yes, yet another common name. Call it what you will, among the many added common names included white-tailed hornet, blackjacket, bull wasp, spruce wasp, bald hornet, and bald-faced aerial yellowjacket. Technically it was a black and white species of yellowjacket wasp. It was not a true hornet. Those appeared in a different genus.
Although one of the scariest creatures of Angelkeep, science claimed it to be a beneficial insect that helped control summer’s oversupply of flies and spiders. Angelkeep found the bald-faced hornet an aggressive aerial fighter while trying to replenish grape jelly into the oriole’s beaker, but never did one sting. They seemed satisfied over dive bombing in close proximity. Perhaps they realized they were about to get a fresh supply of grape jelly or a fresh orange. They loved both. Apparently more than poking a stinger into any Angelkeep food provider’s skin.
Bald-faced hornets had a unique and odd ability to spray venom into the eyes of foe using its stinger. Angelkeep found that fact about this black and white insect quite interesting, noting the resemblance to the spray ability of another black and white creature, the skunk.
Typically these non-hornets, but called hornets, disappeared in Indiana by October. Pennsylvania claimed theirs remained until the middle of the month. The Pennsy-state can keep them longer if they want. They can likewise keep that foolish groundhog that repeatedly miss-predicted any arriving spring as often as Angelkeep’s woolly worm.
All females laid eggs, thus producing more males who in turn built and defended the nest. In early fall the queen began to lay eggs that became more queens as well as some drones. These drones had a specific job involving a “relationship” with a new queen. Drones did not come with a stinger. Thus Angelkeep preferred to associate with only drones. After the drones’ “happy season” they died off, as did the haploid male workers. Only the new fertilized queens live on to the next year’s season.
Haploid males, having only a single chromosome set, get no love life. No wonder they get so stressed and annoyed they go around poking stingers repeatedly into whatever seemed getting near the nest they had so diligently been building. Their home of combs they covered with paper siding. Haploids simply represent the bachelor portion of a lively nest. They toiled overworked, underappreciated, and ruled by a Queen who totally ignored them, as did the majority of the nest filled by worker females and all their offspring consisting of absolutely no blood relation.
Oh, oh, oh, run, it’s a hornet. Ho, ho, ho, no worries, it’s just a bald-faced stingless drone.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
