How Do Wasps Make Their Homes?

A common wasp produces nests from enviromental materials.

Social wasps produce nests for incubating their young and protection against predators and the elements. Unlike bees, wasps do not produce wax to build their homes; instead, they scavenge the environment for material, which is then chewed into a paste and packed together into the distinctive shape people have come to recognize. The residents of a nest constitute what is called the colony.

Construction

Wasp nests vary by species and region.

Most wasps use wood pulp, newspaper, cardboard or other paper products to build their nests. They scrape the fibers off with their mandibles, chew them and mix them with their saliva. The resulting paste is shaped by the workers into the hive's interior structure (comprising combs for eggs) and the exterior (typically a rounded husk). Precise shapes can vary, however; paper wasps, for instance, construct mushroom-shaped nests with open combs.

Wasps are versatile and can adapt their engineering needs to the locale. Mud daubers, for example, make adobe-like nests from mud.

Some wasps even establish nests in a more ad hoc fashion; they simply dig into the ground or move into an abandoned animal burrow.

Appearance

Wasp nests of the paper variety are typically gray or white in color, though there can be some variety owing to the precise wood pulp used. Mud nests are brown or reddish.

Sizes can range tremendously; examples up to 12 feet high have been discovered. A single nest can contain a few hundred to a few thousand wasps. The nests tend to be globular or oval in shape. Wasps construct their homes in locations that afford protection and seclusion. Nests have been found in attics, between window panes, cellars, underneath picnic tables, in walls or trees, and most popularly, hanging on tree limbs.

Interior

Workers build the distinctive hexagon-shaped comb of a wasp nest.

Like beehives, wasp nests contain combs with distinctive hexagon-shaped cells. A single egg is deposited in each cell, from which it will later hatch and begin the life cycle: from larva to pupa to adult. Unfertilized eggs hatch into drones.

The interior is insulated to maintain a consistent temperature, neither too hot or cold.

The nest houses three classes--or "castes"--of wasp society. The queen rules over the nest and lays the eggs. Drones are fertile males who mate with the queen. Workers are infertile females, and they comprise the bulk of the nest, and build and defend the nest.

Protection and Defense

The first line of defense is seclusion; nests are rarely in open and accessible locations. This keeps them away from animals that would disturb them.

Wasp nests made from wood pulp and mud are also waterproof, and nests built into the ground have shafts to allow rainwater to pass without disturbing the inhabitants (much as ant colonies are constructed to keep egg chambers and worker tunnels away from drainage ditches.)

Paper wasps also imbue their nests with a kind of insecticide to repel ants. The main defensive action, however, is for the workers to swarm and sting an intruder. These stings can be extremely painful and potentially life-threatening and, therefore, are often effective in driving off threats to the nest.

Abandoned Nests

A wasp nest, despite its clever engineering, is rarely a permanent structure; its colony is doomed to die off. As winter sets in, the colony will leave and die. Drones linger to mate with the nest "princesses." The drones will then die shortly thereafter, and the future queens will find a place to hibernate through winter's chill (basements, trees, even underground.) The old nest is abandoned and rarely reused.

In the spring, the queens will begin laying and hatching new eggs, which, in turn, will result in a workforce large enough to construct new nests.

References

• Nest construction and sizes
• Types of wasps and their nests
• Wasp life cycles