I came across his Queen Hornet today and watched it for a while as it industriously chewed wood on a fence. You can see the lines on the wood below her where she has already grazed. She was about 35mm long. Queen hornets hibernate during the winter (they produce glycerol which acts as a kind of insect anti-freeze apparently!) and they emerge during April. They chew wood as a raw material for making a nest where they can lay their first eggs, having been mated last year. Within a few weeks the eggs hatch into larvae, pupate and metamorphose into workers who can then take over the work of nest-building while the queen focusses on becoming a non-stop egg laying machine til she dies at the end of the season. But before that she will have laid a few eggs that will hatch out and become queens themselves during the Autumn, who will mate and go into hibernation for next year. And so it goes on....
@jomo the size is one thing because workers are about 25mm, but more to the point is the time of year - you only see queens in April when they wake up from hibernation, the workers won't hatch til late May.
Very interesting Exif data...crafty little camera..
@overalvandaan yes, I love the bristly hairs
@tiedmark I loved your butterfly shot! And yes, it's a crafty little camera
@pipersmom @katriak @gijsje thanks for the comments and favs
@sheilaw I think they get a bad press - they aren't at all aggressive unlike the Asian hornet
@quietpurplehaze Yes, I think most people are rather nervous of them - but actually they sting very rarely and then only under extreme provocation
@skipt07 I just use the macro zoom setting on my panasonic fz72 which works beautifully