Japanese yellow hornet
The Japanese yellow hornet is a big yellow and dark hornet that lives in large families. In Japan it builds the biggest nests of all the hornets there. It even builds them in attics and under roofs.

How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its nests can have from 1000 to more than 10000 little rooms for babies.
In spring the queen starts the nest all by herself. She builds, hunts and lays eggs until her first workers hatch.
It is very good at choosing a home: in hollow trees, underground, on rocks, in bushes or in house walls.
It hunts more than 40 different kinds of insects and spiders.
A worker hornet lives for only about two weeks.
Most asked questions about Japanese yellow hornet
?What does the Japanese yellow hornet eat?
Grown-ups drink sap, nectar and fruit juice. They catch insects and spiders for their babies.
?Where does the Japanese yellow hornet build its nest?
In hollow trees, under the ground, in bushes, and also in attics, under roofs and inside walls.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Vespa simillima
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Family
- Vespidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Vespidae
- Lives on
- Asia
- Also known as
- Yellow hornet, Japanese hornet
Where the facts come from
- Vespa simillima (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by harum.koh from Kobe city, Japan. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.