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Photo#513938
what made this nest? - Dolichovespula

what made this nest? - Dolichovespula
Beaver Brook Association, Hollis, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, USA
May 1, 2011
Size: about 2-3 in in diameter
Found this hanging from the inside of a kiosk roof when I was hiking. No inhabitants were spotted. I know Baldfaced Hornets and Northern Paper Wasps are common in the area. Could it be one of those?

Moved
Moved from Dolichovespula.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

i have
seen these sort of nests here usually in overhangs,but they seem to leave them behind for bigger and better things. so whats a queen nest? is that built by the queen who rears the first workers then they move on? id like to know why that is, as the ones i have seen were allways abandoned.

 
Very many queen nests are found abandoned each year...
Because most foundress females (the wannabe queens) fail to start a colony. Many fall victim to (especially birds) predators, others simply die from various illnesses and diseases. Moreover, they often fight each other in a deadly contest in usurpation attempts.
Indeed, success is the exception rather than the rule for any given individual female.
This one queen nest or "embryo nest" was bilt either by a D. arenaria or a D. norvegicoides female. Size and color of the paper rule out the larger bald-faced Hornet.

 
No...
They use the same nest. The workers expand and reuse the envelope material from the queen's construction as they enlarge the nest. This colony could have failed early, or the queen may have been out foraging.

Dolichovespula sp.
This is a queen nest of the yellowjacket genus Dolichovespula. Not sure if you can identify it to species from this one view, though there are likely average differences. Wait and see what Vespula vulgaris says.

Pretty sure it's not Polistes...
They don't enclose their "combs" to my knowledge. But it looks a lot like the beginnings of a Bald-faced Hornet nest:


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