Organic Insecticides | Organic Pesticides | EcoSMART Bug Spray

Wasp Life Cycle

Wasps come around every summer. They are known for attacking picnics, porches, and your sweet treats while at the pool. These little monsters build their nests around our porches and backyards as we sit inside just watching them. Instead of being scared, we can look into their life and know how long they live and how long they will be around.

We can’t fight against wasps all spring and summer and definitely cannot fight them in the Christmas season. For insight on when to fight wasps, some questions might be:

• When do these summer pests plan out their own attacks?
• When do they come out into our world, and when do they leave?

Wasps have a simple, but interesting life cycle just like most seasonal insects. Knowing when they are vulnerable and when they are ready to fight back is important in understanding their life cycle and the different stages in it. Only when you know these facts can you begin to plan your own attack.

The Wasp Society

In the wasp society, there are different roles and positions to hold:

• At the top of the ladder is the fertile female.
• Next in line are the male wasps.
• At the bottom are the “workers,” or sterile females.

The fertile female can be the queen in some colonies, but usually always hold a higher rank over others in any colony. Other female wasps will aid the queen female in the reproduction cycle. To wasps, the fertility factor plays a role just like a beauty contest.

Why does the role matter when talking about a wasp’s life cycle? Because different wasps and their roles will live different life spans.

• Fertile female can live up to a year.
• Males can live up to 6 weeks, but these 6 weeks are very important in the colony’s population size and cycle.
• Sterile females might only last up to 22 days.

The Wasp Seasons

The process starts out with the female/queen wasp looking for her perfect mate. The lucky female wasp can mate with several suitable males. She does this by storing their sperm in her body. Since this female is already fertile, her eggs do not interact with the sperm right away. This method prevents continuous mating.

The female will begin to build a nest, which will become the home of the new colony. She first hatches workers which will become her new helpers for awhile.

With enough workers ready, she begins to focus on just giving birth and building the colony population. The workers will help her in giving birth, taking care of the young ones, and by protecting the colony as it grows.

Next in line to continue the colony tradition are smaller female bees. Once large enough, they can start to seek males that will lend their sperm.

By the time this new class of young queens reaches the right size and has enough males providing their help, the old queen bee has reached retirement.

As soon as the seasons start to change…

1. Wasps become aggressive and tired. This is why we often see bees and wasps flying slowly in our homes around September and October, making insecticides a possible necessity. While flying low and slow in homes, they tend to feed on overripe fruit that fruit flies and other insects eat. This causes the angry wasps to become “tipsy” in a sense.
2. Larvae from the late summer batch is all grown up and craving protein. These little wasps go looking for it in just where they know they will find plenty of yummy stuff – your sweet treats.

Once the weather starts to cool down…

1. The fertile female will go into hibernation and appear again in early summer. Some females may even begin the process in April, depending on the location and climate.
2. As the queen wasp retires into hibernation, the rest of the colony stays busily working into the cold weather.

When the frosty weather sets in…

1. Male wasps and workers begin to die off.
2. The queens will rest peacefully in hibernation. They will await the spring season and plan the start of their new colony.

When the next spring rolls around…

1. A new nest will be built for the new colony.
2. A queen female will never go back to an old nest from a past season – it’s so last season.

So in March and April, watch out for the fresh, little wasps and their growing families. In these beginning months, they are full of energy. The new wasps are ready to hunt for sugars and will attack anything that gets in their way.

Stopping the Cycle

The wasp’s cycle is all a part of nature, even if we don’t like the pests. So what’s a better way to fight nature, than with nature itself? EcoSMART is an organic insecticide with ingredients such as peppermint oil, wintergreen oil, and canola oil. This spray can be used outdoors and in non-living areas like your attic. EcoSMART can also help keep you away from the nest while destroying it. The powerful jet spray reaches up to 18 feet!

Kacey Wherley