A Colony Begins
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The queen wasp awakes from hibernation in the spring. After a short period of feeding and exploring, she begins to build a nest in a dark and dry place. She usually chooses a warm spot, often in a bank with a sunny aspect, but also in attics, house roofs, eaves, or walls, and she will fly up to 70 km in search of the perfect nest site. |
| She builds a honeycomb-like cell structure out of wood fibre; common wasps collect this fibre from dead or rotten wood, while German wasps use sound wood. The wood fibre is chewed and glued together with wasp saliva to form a sort of paper mâché material. |  |
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In each cell of the new nest,the queen then lays a single egg, which hatches into a larvae in 5 to 8 days. The queen gathers sugary substances and insects with which to feed the larvae. After five moults over about 90 days (the length of time spent in each stage is determined by environmental conditions), each larva spins a silken cap over the cell and pupates. After about 80 days an adult worker wasp emerges. |
Sometimes another queen tries to steal the nest and colony instead of working to make her own. There are many prolonged fights between queens for the ownership of colonies. This is one of the reasons why a large proportion of founding nests (where the queen is working on her own) fail to become established. Also, from our research we know that cold, wet springs reduce the number of nest which establish. Once the queen has five to seven worker wasps to help her, she stays in the nest and lays eggs for the rest of her life. The colony then grows rapidly, and the nest is likely to survive for several months.
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| Overwintering Nests |