Wasp season 2012

Winters are everything when it comes to wasps and their success.
Winter 2011/2012 was a relatively warm and wet winter and saw hibernating queens emerging from hibernation in January. Not a good sign for pest controllers. Those queen wasps that woke up too early will have perished due to lack of nectar producing plants available at that time of year.

The spring of 2012 is probably one of the worst that I can remember, torrential rain and high winds. This weather will have prevented queen wasps from hunting and feeding their first broods.
Its just my opinion, but I think that there will be less wasp nests around this year, partially due to early emergence of hibernating queens, but also to starvation through the spring.
Nests that have survived will show late, my estimations are that they will be at least a month behind normal. Perhaps we will start seeing worker wasps at the beginning of July instead of June.

For some reason bees seem to have thrived throughout the bad weather and the numbers of bee nests including bumble bees, mining bees, masonry bees and honey bees has increased exponentially this spring. Blog menu