Wasps start their life as a single queen. This queen has just been hibernating for the winter and has flown onto your property to start its colony. This is not the same wasp you saw last year. this queen was born before the winter when the rest of the wasps were dying. It will find a nice safe spot and form a small rudimentary nest. And then lay eggs and prepare food for the young. Once the worker wasps reach maturity the nest will start to grow larger. If you pay attention you will see daily growth. Once the nest reaches maturity in the fall the workers and other wasps all die off, all that is left is the queen. The queen finds a nice warm place to sleep through the winter and then starts over again in the spring. This happens over and over every year and some wasps will even take over old disused nests. What is there to do when wasps have filled your home and your yard and are building nests everywhere.
The process of building a wasp nest takes about three-quarters of a year. The queens sleep through the winter and the other wasps die off. The queens spend the last quarter of the year in hibernation. Now when she wakes up in the spring she will make or find a nest and start this process over again. So while the wasps may be different, the queen always stays the same. This may explain why you keep getting new wasp nests every year. Your property is probably attractive to a wasp queen, filled with compost and garbage and leftovers from dinners on the porch, the house and property are a great source of food, so every year the new queen comes back to the same property knowing her workers will have plenty to eat and so will her grubs.
Wasps are a predator of bee, while they are also pollinators the danger they pose to bees is very serious. While exterminator companies will not exterminate bees they will exterminate carpenter bees which make nests in unpainted wood. Wasps are distinct in their appearance. They are not like bees who are small and often furry, the bumblebee is large but is not a wasp by its body structure. Like all insects, they have a hard shell instead of skin like a mammal. They have three body parts that signify an insect. Spiders and other arachnids have only two body parts, an abdomen and a head. The wasp and bee have a head, an abdomen and a thorax which is the large bulbous part that holds the stinger. Wasps have two sets of wings like bees and often look like bees which is an aspect of convergent evolution where an insect or animal makes use of false identifiers like colour and texture to appear like another insect either to cause fear or to trick the animal or insect into approaching. Many animals make use of this method of camouflage, the wasp does it by pretending to be a bee. This camouflage allows them to approach a bee’s nest mostly unnoticed. The bees only realize they are under attack when the wasp swarm appears. A swarm of wasps can kill and consume an entire bee’s nest in a matter of hours and will bring royal jelly back to their queen.
If you want to keep them away, don’t give them anything to eat, keep your home and property clean and don’t leave garbage out all night, or leftovers. Do this, and they may just leave, or you may have to kill the nest with insecticide. It takes about two cans and you may want to wear a sturdy full covering beekeeper suit.
