Active Colony of Japan’s European Hornet in Mid-September 240fps

I had been monitoring the development of a colony of Japanese subspecies (or colour-form) of the European hornet (Vespa crabro flavofasciata, family Vespidae) since they moved in the secondary nest behind the seasoned vergeboard of a Japanese shrine at the foot of a mountain in early-August 2024. Now that it was cloudy and not so hot (27 degrees centigrade) in mid-September, there were only one or two workers at most with wing-fanning behaviour at the nest entrance to cool down the nest. But the nest entrance was always tightly guarded by a few gatekeepers. The busy air traffic around the nest entrance was also recorded at 240-fps high-speed movie or 8x slow-motion (1:38-). Foraging workers occasionally brought home a pellet of minced prey (twice at 3:31- and 4:41-). You can also see an incident of a head-on air collision between an incoming (homing) worker and a leaving (outgoing) one (1:59-). Captured in the cloudy midafternoon (around 15:00 PM) of mid-September 2024 in Japan. The air temperature was 27 degrees Celsius where I was filming under the nest. The European hornets didn’t attack me as long as I stood still. For a full story (text in Japanese); https://sigma-nature-vlog.blogspot.com/2026/03/9-fhd.html 0:00 60 fps FHD 1:38 240 fps (8x slo-mo)