Click to Enlarge Bald faced hornets often build their nest among the branches of a tree. The workers expand the nest through the spring and summer, creating blocks of small cells arranged like apartments in a building. If you find a bald faced hornet's nest, it's safest to just leave it alone. Bald faced hornets don't like to be disturbed and seem to have quite a temper.   The Bald Faced Hornet by Bryan Hendricks Your Missouri Neighbor I'm a bald faced hornet, and I live in Missouri, in a patch of forest. My family and I live in a large house made out of paper. We're really proud of our house because we made the paper ourselves from chewed up wood and spit. Our house, or nest, is shaped sort of like a large, tapered globe on the outside. Inside, it has bunch of small cells bunched closely together in multiple stories. Those are the bedrooms where my family lives. You may have come across a piece of siding that has fallen away from my house. It looks like a piece of bark from a sycamore tree and has a hole in the middle oabout the size of a tack head. You'd know me if you saw me. I'm about three-quarters of an inch long. I'm mostly black, but I have some white markings including some on my face. All my family look the same. We live and work together. That's the only way we can survive. We're always busy, but that's what keeps us going. The head of our family is the queen. Her main job is to lay eggs. She might lay up to 1,500 of them during her lifetime. She spends her winters snoozing in caves or crevices or under overhanging rocks. In the spring, she mates and builds a small nest. Then, she lays a single egg in each cell of the nest. Two or three days later, the eggs hatch. The babies are called larvae. The larvae mature quickly, eating insects that have already been partly digested by other hornets called workers. Within 12 to 18 days, the larvae spin silken caps over their cells and turn into pupas. About 12 days later, they mature into adult workers and will take care of a new generation of larvae. They also work to improve or enlarge the nest. If the queen should die, the workers might even take on the task of laying eggs. Many people don't like bald-faced hornets because we've got short tempers. It's true we sometimes sting people when we get mad or feel threatend. You can't really blame us. We're pretty small, so we've got to be feisty to make it in such a tough neighborhood. Another reason we're not welcome in places where people live is our jerky cousins, the wasps. They like to live in houses with people, and sometimes we get blamed for their misbehavior, even though we have nothing to do with them. They shouldn't be surprised that people don't want them around. We don't either. We bald-faced hornets do a lot of good things. We eat pesky insects, including caterpillars, that damage gardens and fruit trees. We also eat houseflies and blowflies. The world would be a lot better place if more of us were around. Those of us who live in the woods do our best to stay out of your way, but if you come across our houses, please, just pass on by. If you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone.