Bald-faced hornet is constructed too close to human habitation. They vigorously defend the nest, with workers stinging repeatedly, as is common among social bees and wasps. However, the baldfaced hornet has a unique defense in that it can squirt or spray venom from the stinger into the eyes of vertebrate nest intruders. The venom causes immediate watering of the eyes and temporary blindness. The life cycle of a colony can be divided into the founding stage, the ergonomic stage and the reproductive stage. Colonies show annual cycling. New nests are generally founded during spring and early summer by a single queen, though
Bald-faced hornet C29 backbone. The major lipids and their distributions in workers were as follows: n-heptacosane(28%), 11-13-methylheptacosane (15%) 3,13-dimethylheptacosane (11%) and 13 and 15-methylnonacosane (10%). Nonacosene comprised 34% of cuticular lipids in the queen. The average chain length of identified cuticular lipids is 28.0 in queens and 27.5 in workers. In "D. maculata", queens mate with only one male which results in a worker relatedness of 0.75, whereas the relatedness between the queen and worker is only 0.5. Gynes in "D. maculata" have the ability to discriminate between fragments of natal comb and foreign comb. Recognition does not depend upon presence of