If you have a gray, papery nest hanging from your eave, gutter, or porch ceiling, there is a good chance it belongs to a bald-faced hornet or an aerial yellowjacket. Both are common across the Ohio Valley, and both defend their nests aggressively.
How to tell them apart
Bald-faced hornets are mostly black with white or ivory markings on the face and tip of the abdomen. They build large, football- or basketball-shaped paper nests, usually off the ground on eaves, tree limbs, utility poles, and sheds.
Yellowjackets are smaller, with bold yellow-and-black bands. Aerial yellowjackets build enclosed paper nests like hornets do. Ground yellowjackets nest in the soil or in voids inside walls, and are the ones that most often turn up at cookouts and trash cans in late summer.
Paper wasps build small, open, umbrella-shaped combs with visible cells, often under eaves and railings. They are less defensive than hornets, but they still sting.
None of these are honey bees. Honey bees are fuzzy, golden-brown, and nest in enclosed cavities with wax comb, not paper.
When nests peak
A single queen starts a nest in spring. It stays small until early summer, then grows quickly. By late summer and early fall, a colony can hold hundreds of workers and is at its most defensive. That is also when most people finally notice the nest.
When cold weather arrives, the colony dies off. Only new queens survive the winter, and they do not reuse the old nest. They do often pick the same sheltered spot, which is why a nest that appears on your house one year can reappear the next.
Why you shouldn’t spray it yourself
- Hornets defend the entrance and can sting repeatedly.
- A nest high on a gutter or soffit means you are on a ladder when they respond.
- Treating only the visible nest can leave workers and larvae alive inside a wall void.
- Blocking the entrance can push stinging insects into the house.
What to do
Keep people and pets away, do not block the opening, and take a photo from a safe distance. Then request wasp and hornet removal with the photo and your address. If you are in Steubenville, Wintersville, Weirton, Wheeling, or nearby, we can identify what you have and tell you how soon it should be treated. Call (740) 996-3200.