Making Paper

[Burlkraft]

Wow Boss.....those are some close pics.....did ya come through unscathed

[SwampDonkey]

I find alot of those mountain ash in old clear cuts. They seem to some back like pin cherry on some sites. Usually alot of softwood present on the sites. The tree sure is getting hammered by the white faced hornets. They do use wood fibre (obviously) to build their nests. I think their saliva binds the fibres. I remember something on 'Nature' about the process. I've got a yellow jacket nest in the woodpile to 'work around'. 

[Jeff]

Yep, unscathed. Those hornets are so busy they don't seem to notice me. I just move slow and respect the fact that any second I could get my butt kicked.

[UNCLEBUCK]

I have those type of bees in my old barn I am fixing , dont see many of such dark color like that but I sat watching knowing about this thread and I watched them all crawl inside a 1/8 inch hole on a 6x6 50 year old post that holds the barn floor up. Got me a tube of black roofing glue and pumped it full in the hole and went about my business .  Last year my cousin was out checking his cows and flipped a old rotten log out of his way and he got covered by these darker colored bees and barely made it home alive .

Anyone wearing suntan lotion preferably with banana scent is like bee bait even around mild honey bee boxes .

[CHARLIE]

Jeff, it's easier to see the nest in the Fall when the leaves are off the trees.  I used to be amazed at the number of hornets nests I would see when I was out in the duck blind in the backwaters of the Mississippi River.  Almost all the hornet's nests I've seen have been hanging from tree limbs. I've seen them as low as about 6 feet off the ground and as high as about 25 feet up in a tree. But once I had a huge hornets nest under my deck stairs hanging under one of the steps about 6 feet off the ground. One year, as I sat in my duck blind, I counted 8 huge hornets nest off in front of me in the woods. Yep, Fall will be the best time for finding that nest.

One Fall, when I lived in Stewartville, Minnesota, I looked out the kitchen window to see a huge hornet nest in the maple tree. It had been hidden by the leaves. I waited until January when the hornets were all sleeping...... .......I took the nest down and tore the paper shell away from it.  Inside are several flat disk stacked on each other with a spindle between them. Kind of like a high rise apartment. Each disk has a couiple of rows of holes around the rim where the eggs are layed. It's quite interesting.