Oriental hornet
The Oriental hornet is a big reddish-brown hornet with thick yellow bands on its tail end. It loves hot, dry places and is the only hornet that can live in deserts. It digs its nest under the ground, like a little miner.
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Fun facts
The yellow stripe on its body can soak up sunlight and turn it into a tiny bit of electricity. Scientists think this may help give it energy for digging.
Oriental hornets talk to each other with vibrations, a bit like a buzzing message.
A nest can hold several thousand hornets, all living together with one queen.
It sometimes raids honey bee hives to steal honey and bee babies.
You can tell a male from a worker by counting the parts of its feelers: males have 13 and workers have 12.
Most asked questions about Oriental hornet
?Where does the Oriental hornet build its nest?
Mostly under the ground. Sometimes it builds a paper nest inside a hollow tree or another sheltered spot.
?How big is an Oriental hornet?
About 2.5 to 3.5 centimetres long. The queen is the biggest.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespa orientalis
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Oriental hornet (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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