The European Hornet is a wasp that is often just referred to as the Hornet. It is England’s largest social wasp and can mainly be found in the south. It is a social wasp because it lives in a group called a ‘colony’. A colony can consist of up three hundred to a thousand hornets. Each colony has one Queen Hornet that spends most of her life laying eggs and lots of female workers that take care of the general running of the colony. Towards the beginning of winter all the hornets die, apart from the Queen Hornet.

The European Hornet is about two to three centimetres long and the Queen Hornet can reach a body length of up to five centimetres. It has a reddish brown head with two long antennae and a reddish brown thorax. The thorax is the middle part of the body between the head and the abdomen. The abdomen is mainly yellow with black markings. It has six brown coloured legs and two pairs of reddish orange coloured wings.

European Hornets prefer to live in wooded areas where they can build their nests in hollow trees. However, some nests are built in wall cavities, buildings, garages and even disused chimneys. The Queen Hornet first starts to build the nest after she has emerged from hibernation and then lays her eggs. The larvae that hatch out of the eggs soon develop into workers. The workers continue to build the nest while the Queen Hornet concentrates solely on laying eggs in order to create a bigger colony.