I think this is a "bald faced hornet."

it appears to be! Dolichovespula maculata according to the collected wisdom of twitter (most of which was "run!")

Very pretty!

Can you imagine finding a ball of food, literally, the size of a minivan? Lucky insects!

Are the drosophila the smaller bugs with the bright orange eyes who are in the pulp of the apple? Yaaagh! I remember drosophila from last month in the kitchen, not just from high school genetics lessons.. but I didn't know they had crazy orange eyes.

They can when there is a mutation in their eye gene! The 'normal' color is red. If the eye gene only works, partially, the eyes look orange. If the gene was completely defective, the eyes would be white.

Curious... how close were you to the actual subject when you took that shot?

7 inches

So the exterminator will be there in the morning, yes?

there are plenty of apples.

I...I am in awe of their beauty and yet slightly horrified....o_o

that is one of my favoritest dresden dolls photos.

Well, we had a hive of ginormous hornets living in our attic for a season back in mid-2008; fortunately, we learned that they were only territorial toward their hive, and if you didn't interfere with their hive or actively threaten or kill any of the hornets, they'd pretty much leave you alone. Good thing, too, as there were hundreds of them, and they're dangerous enough (when on the hive-defensive) that it requires special expensive equipment to remove... or you wait them out until fall/winter, and they all die or leave and don't return to the same location. In the meantime, we made good use of our whole-house vacuum, and tried to minimize ceiling floodlight use after dark, because they're one of the only hornet varieties attracted to light, and would come out of the attic through the light fixtures to clatter around the lit bulbs. Whee!

These guys, who were each 1-1.5" long:







Edited at 2012-09-07 04:36 am (UTC)

So by the end of the year they were gone?? On their own? Did you go up and fix it so that other wasps decide to move in later on?

I can understand the confusion. It's damn near the Size of a squirrel...

Wow what beautiful wasps!

Scariest thing I've seen yet. Even scarier than the spider.

anything that eats mosquitoes is my friend. i learned that from Alien vs Predator.

Terrifying, yet so beautiful!

Very very pretty!

We have the same wasps that eat our pears. I have never had a problem with them. I've even picked up a pear while they were eating and moved it so the puppy wouldn't step on her and get stung.

I was stung several times on top of my (bald) head by a few of these critters. Very painful. I couldn't believe how big they were.

Anyway, awesome picture.