Bald-Faced Hornets and Their Nests: What Southeast Homeowners Should Know

At Dodson Pest Control, our team gets more bald-faced hornet calls in late summer than at any other time of year. The reason is simple: by August, what started as a small papery nest in early summer has grown into a structure the size of a football, sometimes larger. Homeowners suddenly notice it hanging from a tree, eave, or porch ceiling.

In this article, we will walk through how to identify a bald-faced hornet, what their nests look like up close, how aggressive they actually are, and when a nest needs to be handled by a professional.

Bald-faced hornets are not, technically, hornets. They are a species of wasp that earned the name because of their size and behavior. They are larger than most other wasps you are likely to encounter in the Southeast, growing up to three-quarters of an inch long.

Their coloring is what most clearly sets them apart. While yellow jackets and paper wasps are marked with yellow, bald-faced hornets are mostly black with white or ivory markings on the face and at the back of the abdomen. The white face is the feature that gives them their name.

In flight, bald-faced hornets are large enough to see clearly from a distance and tend to fly in a slower, more deliberate pattern than yellow jackets.

The nest is what most homeowners notice first. Bald-faced hornets build distinctive, gray, papery nests that are roughly spherical and resemble a large football hanging from a branch or eave.

The structure is built by the hornets themselves from chewed wood fibers mixed with saliva. A new nest begins each spring with a single queen and grows steadily throughout the summer as the colony expands. A mature nest by late summer can be a foot or more across and house several hundred hornets at peak.

A few features distinguish a bald-faced hornet nest from other paper nests in the Southeast:

• A single small entrance hole near the bottom of the nest is the only way in or out.
• A smooth, layered outer shell built up of overlapping paper “scales.”
• An enclosed brood structure, unlike the open umbrella shape of a paper wasp nest.

Bald-faced hornets do not reuse nests from year to year. Only the queen overwinters. After the first hard frost, the entire colony dies off and the nest is abandoned. New queens, mated the prior fall, emerge in the spring to find their own locations and start fresh nests from scratch.

“In springtime, the queens emerge. Those are the ones that establish the new nests. Only the queen overwinters, so they’re creating new nests every single season. By late summer and early fall, the colonies are peaking with very large numbers in some of these nests. Then by fall, depending on weather conditions, the colonies start to die off. That’s when the queens go off to overwinter for the next season.”

David Moore, Dodson Board Certified Entomologist

Bald-faced hornets have a reputation for aggression, and the reputation is warranted. They are highly defensive of their nests and have been known to sting repeatedly when a perceived threat comes within a few feet of the entrance.

Unlike honeybees, bald-faced hornets do not lose their stinger when they sting. A single hornet can sting multiple times, and a disturbed colony will mobilize dozens of defenders within seconds. They have also been observed spraying venom from a short distance, which can cause eye irritation if it lands on the face.

That said, bald-faced hornets are not generally aggressive when away from the nest. A hornet that flies past you in the yard is unlikely to sting unless directly threatened. The danger zone is the nest itself, typically within ten to fifteen feet.

If you spot a bald-faced hornet nest on your property, the most important first step is to keep your distance. Do not throw anything at the nest, hit it with a stick, or attempt to spray it with an over-the-counter wasp killer. Most consumer sprays do not penetrate the outer shell of a mature nest, and the agitation can trigger an immediate defensive response from hundreds of hornets at once.

Note the location and the approximate size of the nest, then call a professional. The right time to remove a bald-faced hornet nest is in the evening or early morning, when the colony is least active, and only by someone with proper protective equipment and the right treatment products.

In some cases, if the nest is far from foot traffic and high in a tree, the recommendation may be to leave it alone and wait for the colony to die off naturally with the first frost. A professional inspection can help you decide which approach makes sense for your situation.