Gallery.

Well wood masters really! Wasps start to build their nests in the spring, when the queens, emerging from their winter hibernation, chew wood into pulp, producing a thin papier mache type material.  The result is beautiful, elaborate nests, increasing in size throughout the summer, eventually holding several thousand insects.

In the UK the most common wasps, the yellowjackets, are social wasps, usually living in colonies, but until late summer, the nests are ‘staffed’ exclusively by females. They spend their time working to look after and protect the colony. Some will be engineers building or repairing the nest or carers to look after the larvae. Others will be soldiers to defend the nest or foragers to gather food. It is only in the late summer that male drones are hatched to mate with, and impregnate, the fertile females who will become next years’ queens.

The life of a male wasp is quite different to that of a female. The males only appear in the late summer and spend their time hanging around waiting to seize any and every opportunity to mate. They do not have stings and once they have mated, their life’s ambition achieved, they succumb quickly to the falling temperatures and lack of food in autumn. Females are engaged throughout the summer, one generation following another, each surviving for up to four weeks, servicing the nests and their queens.