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The Lifecycle of the wasp
The common wasp
The wasp’s year starts in the spring, as the days start to warm
up the queen wasps come out from their hibernation where they have spent
the entire winter months. At this time of year there are no active wasp
nests, just queens which will begin to look for a suitable place to build
their new nests.
Once they have chosen a nest location (in a loft, shed or hole in the
ground etc) they will start stripping wood from fence panels and shed
walls etc (you can often see little white lines on shed walls and fences
in the summer, this is a sign of a wasp nest nearby) They chew this stripped
wood and mix it with saliva to make a type of paper Mache that they use
to construct their nest.
We have stolen this video from our sister site to diplay how wasps strip wood
The queen starts the nest off by attaching the first part of the nest
to something sturdy, normally in lofts and sheds this will be a roof rafter
or some other part of the roof structure. She builds a centre stalk called
a petiole. Around this centre stalk she adds cells, these are similar
to the cells that can bee seen within a beehive (although bees make their
cells from wax).
The queen will start to lay eggs in these
cells, once hatched she will forage for food to feed the larvae. Whilst
in this initial stage she continues to build more cells.
The larvae grow quickly due to their protein rich insect food.
When they are ready to pupate into adult wasps, they spin a silk cap
over the top of their cell as illustrated in the images above and below.
Looking closely at the images you can see the maggot like wasp grubs within
their uncapped cells, these grubs are still being fed by the adult worker
wasps and are not yet ready to pupate into adult wasps. When they are
at the right stage of development, they will spin their caps and pupate
(just like a caterpillar into a butterfly), after a few weeks they have
transformed into adult worker wasps and are sterile.
Only the queen wasp lays eggs.
Once the first brood of adults has hatched, they take over the nest building
duties and caring for the larvae, also food collection. This leaves the
queen free to do her job which now consists solely of egg laying.
As the amount of individuals increases, so does the nest size, so a lot
of effort goes into wood collection and nest building, the brood comb
also grows to accommodate the young larvae.
A very good queen honey Bee can produce around 2000 eggs per day, but
a queen wasp will not be anywhere near as prolific, laying nearer to 100-300
eggs per day.
As the nest reaches its maximum size towards the end of summer/beginning
of autumn the nest will produce special cells, these are to accommodate
queen larvae and male larvae. Once these eggs have been laid, the existing
queen will not lay any further eggs.
These special larvae hatch out into virgin queens and also male drone
wasps. The queens leave the nest and fly up in the air to find male drones
from other nests and mate. The male drones search out queens from other
nests.
Once this has taken place, the now fertilised queens find somewhere to
hibernate over the winter months so that next season the whole cycle can
begin again.
The remainder of the original nest along with
the male drones will gradually die off as the first frosts and bad winter
weather arrives.
The nest will not be used again.
German wasps
German wasps have the same lifecycle, the only difference is that the
nest is built in bushes, trees and hedges.