Wasps are very active in the warm months, but where do they go in the winter and survive for the next season? The answer may surprise you!
#wasps #yellowjackets #yellowjacket
When temperatures drop below around 70°F (21°C), yellowjacket wasps become much less active. They have difficulty flying and will stay active in their nest. Yellowjackets are social wasps, meaning they build nests and work together instead of being solitary. Very large nests may have more than one queen laying eggs.
Most of the wasps die in freezing temperatures, but they will do what they can to survive. If the wasp colony can find a relatively warm cavity to overwinter, they will do so. We’ve found these overwintering colonies in gaps in our workshop, as well as in a stack of lumber.
It is more common to have just fertile females (queens) survive and look for places to hibernate and to be sheltered. Wasp queens hibernate in very small spaces and these produce glycerol which acts like antifreeze in their bloodstream. To conserve resources, including the need for food, overwintering wasps enter a hibernation-like state called diapause.
We’ve just described one portion of the life cycle of a wasp, and the queen wasp in particular. But, how did the queen come to exist, and how long did she live?
Let’s run the cycle “backward” so we can see how we arrived at each point in the cycle.
In the later part of the summer, or early autumn, that year’s queen or queens lay their final batch of eggs. The majority of these eggs develop into queens, able to reproduce, along with drones (sexually active male wasps) to inseminate the queens.
The old queens die off, as does most of the colony, including the drones. Inseminated queens then seek out safe spaces to overwinter.
How did the colony begin for that year? A solitary queen finds a spot for a nest, builds a small nest, and begins laying eggs. She collects insects which she feeds to the developing wasp larvae. When these become adults (usually sisters!) they take over most of the non-egg-laying functions.
Wasp eggs develop into larvae and emerge and are ready to go to work in about 30 to 50 days, depending on the weather and temperatures.
In favorable conditions and a good location, the wasp nest multiplies both in size and population. The wasps forage for proteins to feed developing larvae earlier in the season. This is why they visit outdoor BBQs and meals so often and are very persistent. They like sugars as well, particularly later in the season.
Now that you’ve seen the detail of each cycle portion and what happens before that point, let’s summarize the cycle order beginning with early spring.
In early spring, inseminated queen wasps emerge from overwintering/diastasis, find a favorable spot, and build a small nest.
Eggs are laid by the founding queen, and about 30 to 50 days later, adult wasps take over nest building and foraging. The colony grows as does the nest size.
Later in the season, the queen or queens of that nest lay eggs that develop both into sterile queens and drones. In flight, the drones inseminate the queens, and a portion of the queens overwinter to start the process again in the spring.
Most of the colony dies, including the queen(s) from the previous season.
And now you know the secret of where wasps go in the winter!
hey dirt farmer Jade from dirtfarmer
jade.com have you ever wondered where
those wasp go in the winter I've got an
answer for you stick
[Music]
around hey dirt farmer J here from dirt
farmer j.com if you're like me you end
up with wasp nest around your place and
in the spring we'll visit this topic
again and kind of go through the cycle
of was what they're doing when and how
to better control them but for today
we're going to take a look at where the
WASP go in the winter and then how they
come back in the spring and what we're
actually talking about is the life cycle
of a wasp and a wasp Colony now we're
specifically talking about yellow
jackets because Yellow Jackets are the
most common wasp that you're likely to
encounter and there's slightly different
variations on them some of them build
this open type Nest that you see here
suspended under the eve of the roof
here's an abandoned Nest at the end of
the season but you've probably seen this
kind of Nest before a related one is
where there's a nest like this but
inside of a shroud that's a paper mâché
sh shroud these nests are literally made
of papier-mâché that is chewed up wood
fiber cellulose and wasp saliva and they
construct all the structures of the nest
whether it's this type that is exposed
and they can literally be under an eve I
found them in bushes and trees uh and or
you can see the kind that have a whole
shroud around them that better protects
the nest uh for the was now what happens
in the winter these are social Wass
meaning that at least during the warmer
months they tend to congregate and
collaborate to create a whole Colony
when it turns cold they tend to become
more
solitary sometimes out of just practical
need but where do they go in the winter
well if the colony can find a space like
they did here in the shop that we were
building the whole Colony will move into
a gap or a crevice and just go on what's
called diapause which is a kind of a
wasp hibernation where all the
metabolism is very low they don't eat
they don't move their respiration rate
is very low and they are very sluggish
because they are cold blooded so they'll
move into a cavity and just wait out uh
for the weather to warm up in the spring
and they become very active around 70°
fah so they'll move back out and start
another Nest now many times the
entire uh Nest cannot survive it can't
find a suitable place to hide and so
you'll find individual wasps and it is
the fertilized queen that goes and finds
a crevice a place in the ground uh a
pile of leaves or a lot of times we find
there in our wood pile and you can see
right here a queen a fertilized queen
that I found in our wood pile I put her
out in the sun for a moment then I moved
her in the shop here and from start to
finish
she was warmed back up again and
disappeared in about 10 minutes and you
can see her get a little bit active as
time goes on at the very end where I put
a pencil to her and move her around a
little bit I walked away came back about
10 minutes later and she's gone meaning
she's somewhere here in the shop waiting
to attack me I'm not worried about it
we'll make sure we'll take care of her
when the time comes so that's what
happens with a was over Winters now the
rest of the cycle here's what happens in
the spring when the queen emerges she is
pregnant she was mated or uh in the past
season and now she emerges and the first
thing she does is find a suitable spot
to build a nest and she builds a small
starter Nest that probably has five to
10 cells she puts eggs into them and
about 30 days total she now has 5 to 10
sterile
females that are worker wasp that now
take over building more Nest structure
onto it and foraging gathering in uh the
food that's needed to feed those eggs
that become larvae that now develop into
wasp and they're going to need both
proteins which are other uh insects
sometimes it's the meat from the
barbecue that you've got going on
they're very persistent they want to get
around that meat um
sometimes it's sugary substances but
they bring back all this Fuel and about
every 30 days there is a large flush of
of more wasp and that Nest can get quite
sizable you also see Nest sometimes that
are very large uh I've seen some that
are approximately oh this wide and about
uh excuse me this long and about this
wide up under an eve of a house it's
very likely that's multiple queens that
are populating that and they're all
working socially to build this large
Colony now what happens as the season
progresses as the season progresses
temperatures start to drop and when it
starts to get routinely below 70° they
don't function well and it's at that
point uh as the season progresses they
also need to regenerate for the next
time around each Queen lives only
approximately a year so during the later
part of the
Season uh production changes slightly
and a new crop of unfertilized or virgin
Queens are raised along with drones to
inseminate them so then the drones fly
with the Queens you end up with several
impregnated Queens the rest of the crop
or the rest of the um Colony starts to
die off or tries to over winter many
times unsuccessfully but those
fertilized Queens then go into those
wood piles all those protected areas
over winter and here's a really
interesting thing the WASP is able to
over winter not only because of low
metabolism but it generates also a type
of antifreeze kind of a uh a compound
that is very similar to glycol that
allows it to sit in a very slow
metabolism State and not freeze uh the
bodily fluids in it and then to emerge
again in the spring and the cycle starts
all over again they are very efficient
at finding great places to to hide out
and now you know the secret of where was
go for the winter if you found that to
be interesting check out this other
video where we tell you how to
control uh pocket gophers which can be
extremely destructive in properties and
take out a lot of property as well as
vegetables you're growing and while
you're at it check out this other video
from a catalog that YouTube thinks is
perfect for your interest until the next
time this is dirt farmer Jade looking
for that Queen that's still in
here
