If there was honey...most likely bees....possibly killer bees...they are in Texas, although, I doubt they are since you mentioned honey was obvious (killer bees use (not much storage) their honey) and they were calm when the nest was being removed...
Why was it being removed....had they become aggressive????

Because of the prevalence of killer bees in the area, the fire department normally destroys wild colonies, and takes some bees for testing. In this case, because of the odd hive, they were taking the whole hive to a beekeeper to check it out.

They said they had run into these tiny insects once before, when a woman asked that a hive next to her property be removed. When the owner of the property where the hive had been returned home, she was furious, (she loved the hive) and the firemen retrieved the hive and tied it in a tree further in on her property.

Since the killer bee genes may be in any proportion in local wild bees, they may or may not be agressive. Killer bees were initially imported for their greater honey production, and having some killer bee genes may prove an advantage. These insects, however, being much smaller than honey bees, which interbreed with killer bees, seemed unlikely to be mixed.

And the hive was discovered almost directly over my front door. Not a pleasant thought. It is amazing that it could have grown to that size without my noticing, but it was deep in the vines and had to be cut out with a saw. It was only discovered when I had someone trim back the vines.
Diana

Though I admit I cannot see much from the images, what I CAN see sure looks like a bald faced hornet nest to me. I don't think that honeybees make nests like that. BUT, bald faced hornets don't make honey! SO! I'm confused....;-)

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thanks Rhizo. It does look something like the bald-faced hornet's nest, only on a much greater scale. I am sorry that, in trying to fit the pics into the size limitations, the details of the nest are not clear. The surface is very even and looks like a replica of what perhaps a beech tree trunk might look like, complete with swirls around holes where small branches might have been. Both the firemen and I had the impression of honey. It could be that we were under that illusion because of fluid in the dropping pieces. I did not check them out immediately because I thought the insects would be attracted to them and clean them up. The ones I picked up later were clean and dry.
Diana

I've been looking at the pictures of the bald-faced hornet on the net, and there are some similarities and some differences. The nest surface looks very similar, the size of it is right, and the insects gave the impression of being black. On the other hand, there was no major opening on the bottom of the nest nor was it pear-shaped, the size of the bald-faced hornet is larger than a yellow jacket where these were very small, and they get agressive when disturbed, whereas these were astoundingly calm.
Diana

Yellowjackets, evenly though they commonly nest in the ground, build an aerial nest just as do bald-faced hornets.

But you wouldn't have honey dripping from either such nest.

Yellowjackets are yellow and black whereas baldfaced hornets are black and white.

Worker yellow jackets are yellow and black and are about 1-1.25" long. Bald faced hornets are a little bigger at about 1.5" long. They are mostly black with white markings on the face. ("Bald" is Old English for "white", so when old men lost their hair, you saw their white skin underneath.) Sometimes the bald-faced hornets have a thin ring of white on their abdomen.

However I have also seen, this year in my garden, wasps which are only 1/2" long, black, with a white band around their ab. Definitely not a hornet, they appear to be a paper wasp, and they love the mint flowers. They are eating the nectar.

I wonder if you have European honey bees? If you have a smoker in your family, you might get them to stun one, put it in a jar, and freeze it. Then take a pic with a ruler and post it for us.

I think this was pretty much identified on another post, where I put a closeup of it, as a member of the Anthrax family, a bee fly, but I will check out the European bees.
Diana