Is it really an insult, though? Just look at this big burly lady. Look at her handsome face! https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/img_8017.jpg https:/

Is it really an insult, though? Just look at this big burly lady. Look at her handsome face! https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/img_8017.jpg https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/img_8017.jpg I took this shot with my big birding lens, six feet or so from this nest that was under the eave of my side porch. It would have been both rude and dangerous to approach with my macro rig - she's guarding the nest and checking me out, too! Any nest will be actively patrolled against intruders large and small, but the intensity of concern scales roughly with the size of brood and colony, and this was a young nest with probably only one comb - I didn't know it was there until after I'd been much closer to it than this, but they weren't bothered at all, despite that I earned their attention again when I started taking an interest. Not long after this shot, the local raccoons found the same nest and left nothing of it but a few scraps of carton, but it was early enough in the season that they could have escaped and rebuilt elsewhere without losing too much brood - it's not all that easy for a human to tell, but from their looks I'm pretty sure this was the same family that came back later in the year for the figs. I hope so! There were lots of foragers in that tree, so if they were from the same colony then they not only survived but thrived.