What's That I See!
Sometimes something can stare you in the face for a while until you actually notice it.
Standing in my front garden thinking about something, probably irrelevant, I found myself staring absent-mindedly at my Daphniphyllum macropodum, a small tree resembling a rhododendron.
I suddenly realized that there was a large hulking shape high above my head, partially obscured by the tree’s leaves. Stepping closer carefully, I saw a large dark gray oval structure wrapped around a tree limb about four feet over my head.
Upon measuring it later we discovered that it was 15” in length and 36” in circumference.
Clearly, there was some sort of hive hanging up there and Google Lens identified it as belonging to the Bald-faced hornets, Dolichovespula maculata. Closely related to the familiar yellow jackets that are very active in the fall and apparently just as aggressive, it was a good thing that it was now late in the fall season and the hive was abandoned.
Identification
These insects are actually wasps, not hornets despite their colloquial name of Bald-faced hornet. Wasps are situated in genus Vespula and hornets are placed in genus Vespa. Generally hornets are larger and their coloration tends towards brownish-red or black-and-white while wasps tend more towards black-and-yellow. The genus name is derived from doilikho, Greek for “long” which describes the longer face of this insect. Vespula means “little Vespa” and the Latin maculata references the spotted black and white splotches of the face. And finally “bald” does not refer to a shiny scalp but rather an older usage meaning “white” referring back to the insect’s face.
A local science teacher came by to remove the hive for classroom use. These insects are classified among the “paper wasps” so called because their hives are constructed from wood pulp, chewed from the surface of exposed wood. This pulp is then mixed with saliva and extruded through the mouth to build up the hive layers.
Since the hive cracked open a bit during removal, we counted at least four layers of “paper. The different colors – brown, white and gray – testify to the different woods that contributed to the construction which is exceedingly fragile.
Using Available Natural Resources
Given the ingenuity of Indigenous people in using the natural resources of their environment I got to wondering if this wasp paper had ever been put to use. Some of you may be familiar with tapa. Tapa is a cloth material made from the inner bark or bast of certain trees. While widespread in the South Pacific where it is made from specially cultivated mulberry saplings (Broussonetia papyifera/ Morus papyifera L) by vegetative propagation, tapa is also made in Uganda from the much larger tree, the Mutaba – Ficus natalensis.
In fact, when the inner bark is stripped from the Mutube, the locals wrap the exposed trunk with large banana leaves and in about three years, a new layer of bark and bast have regrown and become available for harvesting. The mulberry saplings, however, are harvested completely when their diameter is quite small, so the strips peeled off the stems are only about 4” wide but 70” long.
In the process of making South Pacific tapa outer bark is removed by scraping while the inner bark is dried. When readied for work the strip is hydrated and beaten with special mallets on a large wooden beam. This process softens the bast and the material stretches by about a factor of three. To get even wider pieces, the worked strips are glued and then beaten together, the glue coming from what looks like a starchy potato and called locally mahoa’a l. I cannot find any scientific reference describing it.
While I enjoyed this digression into tapa making, I could not find anyone brave enough or resourceful enough to make use of this wasp paper although there were some online suggestions as to possibly using it in artistic projects. However, each layer is exceedingly fragile probably limiting its use without further strengthening. Keeping in mind that these wasps are quite aggressive, it is perhaps best that they are left alone. The hive however, is dead and abandoned once the cooler weather sets in.
The life cycle of the bald-faced hornet itself is quite interesting and will be the subject of an upcoming blog.