The Life Cycle of Hornets)

Hi, I am Jared. Welcome to Fun Science Demos. You know, through science we have discovered that there are more insects alive on this planet than any other animal, including us. And some of those insects live all by themselves, alone. Some of those insects live together. Insects that live together are called social. You might have seen them before, things like ants or bees or even these guys, hornets. Through science we have discovered that all insects have three body parts, three parts to their body. They have a head and a thorax and their abdomen. They also have six legs, three on each side. One, two, three on that side and three on the other. What are these black things coming out of its head? Well, that is its antenna. And that is how this insect feels things around it. And believe it or not, it also smells things through its antenna. Pretty cool. What else do you notice in this picture of an insect? Well, what are these things? They are the wings. Some insects can fly and some cannot. Some insects have two wings. Some insects have four wings. Some insects have no wings. These hornets are insects. They have three body parts, three legs and these insects fly. But do these insects live alone or do they live together? Are they social? Let us take a closer look and see if we can find out. These two things are hornet's nests. It is where these guys live. But how do these little guys make such big things? It is pretty interesting. These little guys work together to make these big nests. They chew on some wood and take that wood and spread it out and form almost like a paper covering to their home. The inside is even cooler than the outside. When we peel off the outer layers, inside we find these neat little six-sided chambers. Well, what happens in those chambers? What is going on? Let us see if we can peel this one and find the chambers. All I am going to do is carefully tear off some of this outer paper. See how the whole paper shell comes right off. You can see through it. Let us set that aside. And now take a look at this. If I look, I can see actually three levels of these little chambers and rooms. And it looks almost like there is a little tiny paper covering that covers those chambers. So what are these chambers used for? Well, they are actually used for the life cycle of this hornet. What does that mean? Let us take a look. Each hornet's nest has a queen and that queen lays an egg in each of those six-sided chambers. And that egg grows and changes until an adult hornet comes out. We have zoomed in on this hornet's nest so that you can see the different stages of the life cycle. Some of the chambers are empty. That means the egg grew and became an adult hornet. Some of the chambers are covered and that means, well, it did not become an adult hornet. Just think, it took a bunch of hornets working together to make this nest in this home where more hornets are born and hatched and grow to adults where they make more hornets and more nests. It is a life cycle. Now you might actually see a hornet's nest sometime up in a tree hanging onto a house or anywhere up high. You want to be careful because we said that these hornets work together to build their nest. They also work together to protect their nest. These guys can sting and their sting hurts. And there is not just one of them, there are many of them. Many stings equals much pain. You have to be careful because some people are allergic to hornets or wasps or bee stings. So why do not I seem too concerned about being so close to this nest? Well, hornets leave their home for the winter and never come back to it. So this nest is totally safe. If you want to learn more about hornets, check out our link in the video descriptions. Science is so cool. Hornets are so cool. Insects, lots of them. Thanks for watching.