Why Do Wasps Go Dormant After the Nest Is Destroyed?

Who Lives in the Nest

• The working wasps, which are undeveloped females who rarely ever reproduce, conduct all of the work for the hive. The male wasps are called drones, and are much larger in size and color than the females, but do not carry a stinger. Drones are what the worker wasps hatch if they happen to be able to produce. The queens are hatched from fertile eggs that have been placed in larger cells inside the nest. They are larger in size, brighter in color and have different markings on them then the workers and drones.

Work Ethic

• Working wasps are generally calm in nature, and do not fight or steal from each other as other insects tend to do. According to the book "Wasps and their Ways", written by Margaret W. Morley, only on rare occasions do the wasps get angry with another member of their nest and partake in a battle, often resulting in the death of one of them. The wasp is such a generous creature that if one worker comes back to the nest with her stomach full of honey, she will regurgitate it so that they can eat. The drones are considered lazy and do not work to retrieve food for their nest mates. Often, they can be found napping inside a cell or picking up dead wasps and removing them from the nest. The queen only emerges on sunny days where she finds a drone to mate with, who gives her reproductive fertilizer that she stores to fertilize her eggs. This quantity has to last her entire life, because she can only mate one time.

Destroyed Nest

• Unlike a bee nest, a wasp nest usually doesn't survive winters, especially after its inhabitants abandon it and all eggs and larvae to seek warmer weather. The only wasp that can withstand the winter is the queen, who has the will power to live in freezing conditions. Once she is left alone, the queen goes into a dormant state by finding a small nook to crawl into, where she awaits the warm weather to start a new colony.

After Dormancy

• When the queen emerges from her dormant state, she begins the search for a new nesting site. Once she has found it, she builds a very small nest made out of wood fiber where she will begin to lay her eggs, usually enough to build an entire colony. She fertilizes the eggs with the sperm she has stored from her one and only mating session with a drone. The queen will raise the first sets of eggs until enough female wasps have matured and are ready to take over with the daily work load. The eggs continue to hatch and mature until the end of the summer months, when thousands are working, and the nest has grown larger in size. The queen typically does not have many more weeks to live, where she will pass the throne on, and the yearly cycle starts all over again.