A Trap Has Grown Here to Farm the Droppings of Hornet-Women

McGrogan asked over on their blog asked about a trap for hornet-women. Here’s by naturally occuring option.

Pseudo Nests are actually a fungus that survives mostly on the … processed leavings of hornet-women as they’re going to and from their actual nest. Mostly harmless to non-hornet creatures, these imitation nests become more proficient at luring their meals towards them as they grow from small patches of fungus to swallowing up whole forests if allowed.

Spores of this fungus can be found, quite harmlessly, inside many hornet-women’s digestive tracts, largely dormant. These spores are swept up in the normal processes of the hornet and are expelled, often quite near to an actual nest. They begin to reproduce only when in contact with trees or soil which it makes its habitat and yet still survives off of hornet droppings throughout its life cycle.

Once passed their immature stage of “hoping” for food delivery, the nest takes a more active roll in finding food: the developed fungus looks and smells nearly identical to a hornet nest made of traditional material. Akin to catnap or nicotine, the hornets stop by regularly simply to breath it in (and there by picking up more fungus inside of themselves).

For the largest colonies – a key identification for gardeners is the speed of growth and if it reaches unnatural size – the colony has been known to take the addicted, starved bodies of the hornets and reassemble them in the ape of a queen hornet.

With a “queen” present, whole swarms settle and ultimately perish to the fungus. This seems to be the natural limiting factor to the size of Pseudo Nests: they ultimately become too efficient at capturing their prey and can wipe out entire swarms that pass.