anybody know anything about a hornet this big?
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these pictures dont do it much justice but this sucker was huge! the abdomen was the size of a cigarette butt.

does anybody have any incite to a hornet this big?

Yellow jacket hornets live in hive-type communities, usually built in the ground, more of a big den.  I've seen one really large like that before and thought maybe it was a queen or something, although I don't know if they have one.  It moved slow.

In fact August is the month yellow jackets are most abundantly around in the MI woods.  Don't see them much otherwise.

this one was pretty active kevin. you make a good point. you very seldom ever see the queen. the stripes are a little different than the regular hornets i usually see in these parts. makes me wonder if theres some kind of mutant strain of hornets going around. :-? 

This one falls into the B.F.B. category.

In my house it would be in the D.F.B category.

Is there a B.D.F.B. category?

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Looks like a ground hornet to me.  Males don't sting, but females do.

When I was much younger, I stepped on a ground hornet.  Made it into the house before I turned the air blue.

That's a seriously scary looking beast! :o

JOe

I use to get those big ones around my apple trees. They would eat the apples, was fun when I would pick an apple up and there were 5 or 6 inside it ! did not take me long to look at the apple! :o

Must be a female ground hornet.......................she's window shopping.

              Potter

after i shot it with brake cleaner it was in the B.D.F.B. category. now that you mention apple trees tim i have 2 in the tree line down by the creek. last year i posted about the honey bees the moved into the side of my house after i cut the one apple tree down. i looked in the bug guid and it looked a PARASITIC YELLOWJACKET. we get allot of carpenter bees out here. START PRINTPAGEMultimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or END PRINTPAGE

the males are big, black, and hairy. they are aggressive but they cant sting you. the females have yellow stripes and can sting but they are less aggressive. if they do sting its much worse than a wasp or a regular bee. they're hard to take down with brake cleaner too. they'll bore a 1/2 in hole into wood. you cant block the hole cause they bore through somewhere else. gotta shoot borax powder into the hole.

That thing almost looks like a cicada killer wasp.
Does it borrow in the ground in an angled hole?
If so, we have these suckers in our yard since the cicadas are out in force.  Again, only females sting, but
it's very rare for them to sting humans, that is if it is a cicada wasp.

deltadarlin wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 8:29am:

Looks like a ground hornet to me.  Males don't sting, but females do.

Isn't that the precis of life? ;D

Jerry

Does it look like this?

---

Chad wrote on Aug 4^th, 2010 at 1:48pm:

Does it look like this?

yes chad and cicadas are out in full force.  so whats the relation between the cicada and this wasp?

It appears to be a Cicada Killer Wasp.  The female Cicada Killer Wasp hunts for and stings cicada to immobilize them then flies back to her nest with them. The nest is usually a half to three-quarte inch hole in the ground usually under low lying juniper evergreen shrubbery.  The female fills her nest with cicada and she lays her eggs on them for food when the larvae hatch. 

We've had them in our back yard every summer for many years.  Big hummers... and they look even bigger when they fly in carrying a cicada.

Take care,

V/R, Batch

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Ok, here are some Youtube videos of what these things do.
I think the female actually lay eggs in the cicada as they constantly sting the cicada pulling them back to their burrow.  These little F-ers are strong wasps.  Here are the links: 

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It's a pretty amazing bug if you ask me!

thanks pete and chad. that is pretty amazing

Some good images. Thanks.

All I know is while dumpster diving for carboard envelope stiffener behind a grocery store last summer, one of these little bastards (looked like a wasp to me) got me good. It had been about 40 years since my last encounter. Yikes. I'd forgotten just how much fun it was..... :o

Charlie