Bald-faced hornet Bald-faced hornet Dolichovespula maculata is a eusocial wasp of the cosmopolitan family Vespidae. Its colloquial names include the bald-faced hornet, bald hornet, white-faced hornet, white-tailed hornet, spruce wasp, blackjacket, and bull wasp. This species is a yellowjacket wasp, not a true hornet (genus "Vespa"). Colonies contain 400 to 700 workers, the largest recorded colony size in its genus, "Dolichovespula". It builds a characteristic large hanging paper nest up to 58 centimetres (23 in) in length. Workers aggressively defend their nest by repeatedly stinging invaders. "Dolichovespula maculata" is distributed throughout the United States and southern Canada, but is most common in
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