The annual life cycle of social wasps, such as Yellowjackets and hornets, is a highly structured process culminating in a single, seasonal reproductive event. Mating is the central act that ensures the survival of the species across the winter, allowing a new generation to establish colonies the following spring. Unlike solitary wasps, which reproduce throughout the year, social wasps concentrate all reproductive effort into a brief, intense period.
The Timing and Trigger
Wasp mating occurs primarily in the late summer and early autumn, marking the final stage of the colony’s annual growth cycle. The biological trigger for this event is the colony’s shift from producing sterile female workers to raising reproductives: new queens, known as gynes, and males, called drones. The original queen, who started the nest in the spring, typically begins laying the eggs for these fertile individuals once the colony has reached its peak population size.
This shift is often influenced by environmental cues like shorter daylight hours and cooling temperatures, signaling the imminent end of the foraging season. The queen also plays a direct role, as she may begin to run low on the sperm she has stored, resulting in the production of unfertilized eggs that develop into males. Males usually emerge from the nest about two weeks before the new queens, giving them time to mature for the impending mating season.
The Mating Process
The new queens and males leave their natal nest to find mates, a process that ensures genetic diversity outside of their original colony. Males often gather in specific areas, sometimes around trees or objects on high ground, forming mating aggregations. These drones fly continuously in search of a receptive female.
When a newly emerged queen flies into this aggregation, the males rush to mate with her. The actual mating act typically occurs on the ground, close to the nest, where the male deposits sperm into the female’s reproductive tract. A queen may mate with several males during this brief period to collect a sufficient supply of sperm.
The queen stores the sperm long-term in a specialized internal organ called the spermatheca, keeping it alive and viable in a dormant state for up to a year. This single mating event, or series of events, provides all the genetic material needed to fertilize the thousands of eggs she will lay to build a new colony the following spring.
Post-Mating Lifecycle Shift
Following the mating event, the participants face vastly different fates, concluding the annual life cycle. The newly fertilized queens immediately leave the mating area to find a protected location for overwintering. They seek out sheltered spots, such as under tree bark, in attics, or within wood piles, where they enter a state of hibernation, or diapause.
These mated queens are the only members of the colony to survive the winter, conserving their stored fat reserves until spring returns. Conversely, the males die shortly after mating, often hastened by cold weather. The original queen and all sterile worker wasps die off as temperatures drop and food resources become scarce in the late autumn, and the old nest is abandoned.