Almost certainly from some species of bee/wasp/hornet but I have no way of going any further. If you really want to know, find an entomologist in your part of the world for help.

If it is in what I think it is, it is a rather unusual picture. It would be helpful to see what it looks like from the side, in particular how it is attached to the branch. It would be even more helpful to know where you are writing from. I admit though, that the probable builder is a member of a large and fairly variable group and that species from various parts of the world differ considerably, both in their appearance and in the appearance of their nests.

Firstly, it is a wasp nest. Mike got that right in one.

Secondly, it is a wasp nest made of paper.

Thirdly, it is almost certainly the first nest constructed by a young queen trying to establish a new colony.

About there I run out of steam.

For one thing, I do not recognise that nest shape. It looks almost like a bee comb, being so clean, but it also looks as though it is one-sided, whereas bee combs are double sided.

It is so clean that it looks as though it is made of wax, which also would indicate a bee construction, but the more closely I look, the more it looks like a clean, new, paper construction.

Now, paper wasps (omitting a small group irrelevant to this question) are all in the family Vespidae. They include the hornets and yellowjackets in one major subfamily, and the polistine paper wasps in another major subfamily. There are some other minor groups, but this picture does not suggest any of them to me.

Once a colony is well established the nest tends to get pretty heavily used, turning a dirty grey, which makes it less conspicuous, so that is no disadvantage.

However, young queens starting out on their own tend to make the nests laboriously from new material, which tends to be light in colour, though if you examine the picture carefully, you can see the first signs of dirt collecting on those nice clean cells.

The further you live from the equator, the more strongly I should guess that to be the nest of a Vespinid, whereas the warmer your region, the more strongly I should suspect that it is the nest of a polistine wasp.

Given more information, we might be able to come up with something more substantial.

Cheers

Jon

Hi Alison,

Thanks for your information.

This is a prime example of how risky it is to identify things from pictures, even very good ones like that! But I just never learn. (There is a word for that, but I have never learned it.) Smell, feel, etc mean so much in practice, though I must say that some of your evidence is very confusing. For example I would have expected bee comb to have a very obvious bee smell.

However, if it is bee comb it certainly was very young when abandoned, or it would not be so white, and it was not occupied long, or you certainly would have known about it.  Unfortunately I can see no sign of your attached video anywhere, but could you tell me whether there are hexagonal cells on the back of the comb as well? If so, it is bee comb, no discussion. If not, it isn't, no discussion. If it is wax (I thought the material looked a bit fibrous, which is why I plumped for paper) then it was bee comb. That it was in England means that if it was a bee, it was no other bee but "European" honeybee.

If it was honeybee comb in the open, then it surely was made by a swarm that hung there for a longish time before electing to leave for a nest that the scouts preferred, rather than remaining indefinitely in the open. I don't suppose that anyone remembers whether there was a swarm hanging there recently?

By checking the back of the comb for cells on both sides you can settle the matter without further ado, but if you would like to experiment a little, you can put a small scrap of the comb on a sheet of cooking foil and put the foil on a hotplate.  If it is paper it will char. If wax it should melt visibly and smoke rather fragrantly when it get about as hot as boiling water.

Do let us know.

Cheers,

Jon