Oct 21, 2022 4 min read

It wasn’t until the landscaper rang the doorbell that I found out that Smoothie and I had been in danger.

“Did you know there’s a hornets’ nest in your tree?” said Sean, the leader of the crew that takes care of the yards here at the condo neighborhood.

“What? Where?” I said, stepping out onto the porch.

“It’s huge,” he said. He was right.

Tucked and hidden in the branches of the tree was a papery, gray, egg-shaped ball the size of a large watermelon. Looking up, I could see the black hole halfway down the side, the doorway for hornets that were buzzing in and out.

“I’d stay away from this tree until we take care of it,” Sean said.

Turns out baldfaced hornets had built the nest, and judging from the size of the nest, they’d been at it all summer. Sean’s plan was to wait until a hard frost, when the adult hornets go dormant, and remove and burn the nest. I was glad to know this task wouldn’t be on my list of things to do.

Because the hornets’ stingers are not barbed like a fish hook, one hornet can sting a person over and over again. Websites describe them as violent attackers. I was more worried about the dog than about me.

There’s plenty of folklore around hornets and their nests. A friend told me that generations ago, people would relocate an active hornets’ nest to the space above the front door of their log home, to allow the hornets to eat other insects. While that’s a charming bit of information, I’m not sure I’d be eager to swap my everyday house bugs for hornets, but what do I know.

Another bit of lore has it that the higher the hornets build the nest in the tree or the eaves of a house, the more snow will come that winter. Maybe hornets know more than we do – in the same way the wooly caterpillars can tell us in advance what kind of winter we’ll be having.

It’s struck me as ironic that, while living in the woods in a country setting for all those years, I never had a hornets’ nest -or at least I never saw or worried about one. I moved closer to civilization, and the hornets found me.

Some research told me the hornets are busy during the day, and that safe removal of the nest should happen at night. I’m guessing that’s what happened here. Yesterday, Smoothie and I headed out for our morning walk and I looked up into the tree. The nest was gone. Someone must have come overnight to take the nest away. Did they burn it? There’s no sign of that. I’ve heard that some people collect the empty nests, for art projects. They remind me of papier mache.

In researching my nest, I came across a little rhyme:

See how high the hornets nest,

’twill tell how high the snow will rest.

If the height of my nest is any forecaster, we’re in for lots of snow. That nest was at least eight feet up there. And I think the caterpillars agree. The ones I’m seeing on the bike trail have dark fuzz near their heads, and reddish fuzz along the rest of their bodies, a marking that suggests the winter will start out hard but get milder as it goes.

How would these bugs know more than our scientists do? I don’t know, but apparently the caterpillars are warning us things are about to get cold around here.

And the hornets agreed.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.