Hornet Flight

In late summer, I often see a European Hornets/Vespa crabro or two cruising around the pollinators. Last week, on two different days, I saw many more. In both cases, the wasps were flying around beech trees. They were hard to count and impossible to photograph in the air, but I would say maybe two dozen the first day, perhaps a dozen two days later (different trees). I gathered they were males jockeying for position. Mating flights for many Hymenoptera are late in insect season. (Mated females overwinter, males die off.)

Though smaller than females, males have 7 abdominal segments to the females’s 6.