Yellow jackets are highly social wasps known for aggressively defending their nests. These insects belong to the genera Vespula and Dolichovespula and are characterized by their distinct yellow and black markings. Most yellow jacket colonies operate as an annual social unit, centered around a single reproductive female. This founding queen is the sole egg-layer responsible for the massive population growth that occurs over the summer months.
The Role of the Single Founding Queen
The vast majority of yellow jacket species are considered monogynous, meaning the colony is centered around a single reproductive female. This founding queen is the only member who successfully mated and survived the winter to establish a new nest. She begins the nest alone in the spring, building the initial paper cells, laying eggs, and foraging to raise the first generation of workers.
Once the first batch of workers emerges, they take over all tasks of nest maintenance, foraging, and defense. The founding queen remains inside the nest, dedicating her life solely to reproduction. She exerts biological control by laying two types of eggs: fertilized eggs that develop into female workers and unfertilized eggs that develop into male drones. Her presence and pheromones also suppress the reproductive development of worker females, ensuring only she contributes new offspring.
The Annual Life Cycle of the Nest
The life of a typical yellow jacket colony is seasonal, lasting from spring until the first hard frost of late fall or early winter. The cycle begins when the fertilized queen emerges from her overwintering site, such as a hollow log, soil cavity, or leaf litter. She works alone for several weeks, establishing the nest and raising the first 30 to 50 brood cells of infertile workers.
As the season progresses into summer, the workforce expands rapidly, allowing the queen to fully transition to her role as an egg-laying factory. The colony grows exponentially, often reaching peak population size in late summer or early fall. A mature nest can contain thousands of wasps, sometimes reaching 3,000 to 5,000 workers and 10,000 to 15,000 cells.
The growth phase shifts as autumn arrives and resources become scarce. The founding queen, confined to the nest for months, will eventually die, marking the end of the colony’s productive life. The remaining workers and males perish with the onset of cold weather, leaving the nest vacant since yellow jackets do not reuse their nests.
Production of Next Year’s Queens
The single-queen rule has one exception: the production of the next generation of queens, which occurs toward the end of the annual cycle. In late summer and early fall, the founding queen begins laying eggs that develop into new, fertile females (gynes) and males (drones). This shift signals the colony’s impending end.
The workers feed these new reproductive larvae a richer diet than the earlier worker brood, leading to the development of fully fertile females. Once mature, these new queens are significantly larger than the workers and may number in the hundreds or thousands, depending on the parent colony’s health. These newly emerged gynes leave the nest to mate with the drones, flying away to find protected spots to hibernate, such as under tree bark or in soil. They are reproductive successors and do not function as active queens within the established nest.
These newly mated gynes survive the winter, each carrying the potential to start a new colony the following spring. The original nest contains only one active egg-laying queen throughout its life, but it produces many potential queens that are not functional members of the current social structure. A few yellow jacket species, particularly in warmer, non-native climates, can sometimes develop multi-year colonies with multiple queens, but this is an exception to the typical annual life cycle.