Hornets are famous for their love of picnics which they happily pillage for food, drinks and your screams of horror. If you’ve ever picked up a piece of steak in your trembling hands and inspected it for damage after a hornet raiding party, you probably noticed that they had taken sizeable chunks out of it.

Hornets have powerful jaws and a taste for flesh. But there’s a catch. The adults don’t actually eat meat themselves. Instead, they chew it up and feed it to their young. The babies in turn ooze out a sweet liquid that the adults then happily consume.

Case in point, our accidental pet hornet ZhuZhana, the worker-turned-queen who spent the last dozen or so of her hornet years with us, would graciously accept our offerings of sugar water. (She notably dropped some of her enthusiasm for assorted fruits once she had gotten a whiff of pure white sugar.)

But she never ever deigned to accept any kind of meat. Hornets may possess only a few ganglia but our ZhuZhana clearly knew she could no longer return to her nest to feed the baby hornets. Her cozy new home, complete with an endless supply of sugary treats and our adoring stares, was all she had left and she decided to make the most of it.

Dearly missed by us, she is survived by her family in our old hollow apple tree.

Sršeni slovijo kot navdušeni roparji piknikov, kjer se lotijo vsega od sadja, pijače in mesa, pa tudi človeških branilcev pikniških dobrot, če po sršenje presodijo, da se preveč razburjajo. Če človek ni preveč zaposlen z vreščanjem in klatenjem po sršenjih gostih, pa utegne opaziti, da so že ob prvi najavi njihovega prihoda iznenada poniknile vse druge žuželke, ki so do tedaj obletavale pijačo in jedačo.

Sršen je pač mogočen žužon, ki vliva strahospoštovanje širni okolici, še zlasti manjšim žuželkam, ki jih mimogrede hrustne na pol. Prav zato je v osnovi precej mirna žuža, ki se ne pusti hitro razburiti, kadar je na obisku pri tebi.

Malce drugačna zgodba pa je, če si ti na obisku pri njih. Če te zagledajo blizu sršenjaka, jim to kar precej pospeši srčni utrip. Pa še takrat hitro pokapirajo, kdo od ljudi je domač in ne skriva v sebi kakšnih dezinsektorskih namenov.

Če hočeš zanesljivega odganjalca komarjev, moljev in muh skozi vse poletje, si težko omisliš boljšega od sršenjaka pod napuščem. Domači sršeni ti ne bodo storili ničesar, razen če ti prvi začneš, premnoge krilate in tudi kakšne nogate vsiljivce pa bodo odločno napotili drugam.