Wasp Season 2011 Progress report!

Here are a few thoughts of mine about the wasp season so far here in Hampshire.

As predicted the cold winter appears to have kept queen wasps in a deeper, longer hibernation to which they emerged to a warm (perfect) spring.

I believe that many weaker queen wasps would have normally died in less than perfect years, and this accounts for the many smaller nests that are starting to appear now (mid July). These queens have managed to survive and rear some brood which have managed to continue the nests into summer.

Personally it has been far busier than a normal year with larger nests appearing earlier. I believe that this year the nests will get big. We are having what would appear to be a poor summer with lots of rain, but as far as wasps are concerned, rain is a good thing, meaning plenty of insect food to support a larger brood nest which equates to more wasps and bigger nests.

It is hard to predict how long the wasp season will be this year, but if we have a late warm spell in the summer then things could go on until October/November.
I have witnessed some newly hatched queens whilst I have been treating nests, but this was all on the same day a couple of weeks ago. My thoughts on this are: perhaps there was a shortage of food for a few weeks and some nests were having a hard time. Since then I have not seen any more newly hatched queens and the nests are continuing to get constantly bigger and busier. Blog menu