I’m all for celebrating insect life in the garden, except when it’s something like this:

My son enjoys jumping past these azalea bushes in our front yard on the way to the front door.  Luckily he spotted this behemoth before he brushed past it and angered its occupants.

Removing the hive was a scary process, but the denizens (which we surmised were Bald-faced Hornets) weren’t overly aggressive and luckily I didn’t get a single sting.

Later, my son opened it up to investigate, and we discovered the architecture of the hive: layers upon layers of thin walls protecting the eggs in the middle.  We felt a bit guilty at having laid waste to this tiny society.

But sometimes the humans come first.

(Photos by Charlie Gray)