When the ice and snow start to melt and the temperatures begin warming up, wasp activity may start to increase. Wasp season begins every year at the start of spring and brings new nests and new risks to you, your property and your family. Before you get an infestation, you should understand the life cycle of these common creatures.

Truly Nolen specializes in pest control in Toronto that uses smart, proven strategies to safely remove insects and other creatures from your property. Effective pest control starts with knowledge of the animal’s habits and life cycle. For example, our approach does not support the destruction of bee populations, which are necessary for the wild to support the diverse flora and fauna of the planet. Instead, we focus on non-fatal removal for those beneficial insects.

Here are some details about when wasps will start to appear and what is going on in their nests each season.

Hibernation

The wasp life cycle begins with a female queen’s hibernation. The queen wakes up from her hibernation in the early spring, usually when temperatures are consistently above freezing. Her hibernation spot will be somewhere hidden, such as inside of a tree or in a tucked-away hole in a building.

After she comes out of hibernation, her next task is to seek out a new place to make a nest. Queens may build their new nest near an old nest or on top of it if the spot is in an ideal location. While she searches, her diet mainly consists of nectar from flowers.

A New Nest

Next, she starts building her new nest for the next colony. Queens build their nests out of wood that they have chewed. The resulting material is similar to a paper paste and perfect for constructing a secure nest. She finds raw material wood from common structures in neighbourhoods, such as fences, decks and structures.

Her nest starts with the central cell or petiole, and then all of the other individual cells around it. After she builds a few cells, she lays eggs in them to help build up her new colony of wasps. The larvae hatch into male drone wasps, who take over the nest building from the female.

Male Drones

Once the male drone wasps are ready to take over construction, the female queen can focus on her most important job, laying more eggs and building up her colony’s numbers. The worker drone wasps add more cells to the nest to accommodate the female’s egg-laying. The queen may also hatch more female wasps who are infertile. Their job is to help feed the young and protect the nest from predators.

Once summer arrives, newly hatched wasps from the nest start leaving their home colony and looking for mates from a different nest. At the end of summer and into fall, the colony’s residents may start to struggle to find food. Eventually, the wasps will all die off except for the queen. Once her brood dies, she will search for a place to hibernate in during the winter.

Effective Pest Control in Toronto

Truly Nolen can help educate customers on wasp prevention strategies and provide professional wasp removal if there is an infestation. Start by taking away any potential food source, such as trash or pet food. Keep garbage covered and seal up any holes in the ground on your property and throughout your home.

Removing a wasp nest yourself can be dangerous and sometimes, not effective. Let us handle this daunting task and prevent wasps from nesting on your property. Contact Truly Nolen for more tips and strategies to prevent insects and other pests from infiltrating your home with our Four Season Pest Program.