Paper Nest Types

They build paper nests, but where do they get the paper from?

They get it from scraping wood surfaces with their biting mandibles until they've got a little ball of material. - seen below

Wasp scraping the gray, dried surface of this wood to use the "paper" for their nest.

Watch a video of this type of Wasp collecting the paper material. - High-speed internet users only! Download the video before playing it. 12Mb

They fly back to the nest and while mixing their saliva with it they form it into a paper material that their whole nest is made of. The nests have a gray look because of the sun-bleached wood surfaces that they got the material from.

Lines created from previous "scrapings".

On the side of this railing you see horizontal lines that appear to look like little scrapes. Paper Nest building Stinging Insects (Wasps, Hornets, Yellow Jackets) gathered nest material here. The lines that are grayed-over are from last year, and the lines that have a brown fresh wood look were done this year.

More information:

Common Fallacies.

Traps you could get caught in if you should decide to remove a nest yourself.

Return to Stinging Insects for other types.