Bald-faced hornet arthropods, chewing them up and feeding them to the larvae. They have been known to scavenge raw meat. In late summer and early fall, the queen begins to lay eggs which will become drones and new queens. After pupation, these fertile males and females fly off to mate. Fertilized queens then overwinter and start new colonies during the next year. Males and workers die in the end of the cycle. The old queen, if not killed by workers, dies with them around mid autumn. Bald-faced hornet Dolichovespula maculata is a eusocial wasp of the cosmopolitan family Vespidae. Its colloquial names
Bald-faced hornet the queen's brood. In a sampling of seven "D. maculata nests", 20.9% of males were produced by workers. The percentage of males who were workers’ sons did not correlate with the time during which nests were collected or colony size. Because worker relatedness is so high in "D. maculata", workers are more related to other workers' sons than to the queen's own sons, and therefore worker policing of egg production does not occur. An explanation for the queen's near monopoly on male production is that worker production is costly and therefore reduces total colony reproduction. The cost toward worker production