Why Do I Have Lethargic Wasps?

There are a range of reasons that you might encounter lethargic wasps in your home, and in all these scenarios, it is likely that you have a nest nearby that you may have missed whilst it was active in the summer months. It is assumed that wasps usually make their nests outside, however they are quite common in sheds, lofts, and other sturdy wooden spaces.

Wasps can build their nests in unexpected places as they can be shaped around or in between wooden beams and other obstacles.

Warm winters

If you’re finding one or two lethargic wasps, it is likely you have stumbled across queens that have come out of hibernation too early. Queens should wake up when spring comes around, but if the weather is unexpectedly warm and they wake up early, they end up starving due to a lack of suitable food.

Life Cycle of the Wasp

Understanding the life cycle of the typical wasp can help you to understand why wasps are coming into your home when they are. It is unlikely that you will see an active wasp nest in the winter months, and the only wasps that are usually encountered are queens hibernating and waiting out the cold.

When spring comes around, the queens will come out of hibernation, and start looking for a new location to build a nest. Many queens do die in hibernation, but this is usually down to predation by other insects such as spiders rather than the cold itself. Whilst we might sometimes like a warmer, milder winter, these are bad for queen wasps. Warmer winters mean that the queens come out of hibernation earlier and end up starving due to a lack of available food.

It’s commonly believed that wasps eat insects, but this isn’t the case. The mouths and digestive systems of wasps are not actually capable of eating any solid foods. Instead, they have a series of tubes designed to suck liquids, such as nectar, much like a honeybee has. The mandibles are instead used to bite other wasps (in defence or in attack), or to catch and dissect prey to feed their young. The wasp larvae then regurgitate a sugary liquid that is made up of the chitin from the insect exoskeletons that is then fed back to the adult wasps.

Once a queen that has survived the winter months has started building a new nest, she will create cells in which she will lay eggs, in a similar structure to that found in a beehive. Once the eggs begin to hatch, she will find food to feed them whilst also building more cells and laying more eggs. The protein-rich insect diet means that young wasps grow up very quickly. Once the first generation of adult wasps have grown up, they will take over building the nest and caring for the young. This leaves the queen free to lay more eggs and control the nest.

Towards the end of the summer, the nests reach their maximum size, and the queens will lay queen eggs and unfertilized drone eggs. Each nest can produce between 1000 and 1500 new queens. Once these eggs have laid, the reigning queen will not lay any further eggs. Once these last eggs have hatched, the male drones and new queens will travel from the nest to mate. The males recognise queens from their own colony and avoid mating with them to prevent interbreeding. After mating, the new queens find somewhere to hibernate, and the male drones die.

Wasp Nest Removal / Treatment

We do not usually attend to any active wasp nests until July/August at the earliest – this is due to the very early nests being difficult to locate and these can be within wall cavities, loft insulation, roof timbers etc. As the nest develops it becomes easier to locate and therefore we can offer a more guaranteed rate of success.