That is a very complicated question. Worker wasps and hornets die of with every winter. However, the queen and her queen children do not die off when winter comes. Instead, they find a warm place to hibernate for the winter and then begin building their nests when the spring comes. Both wasps and hornets build nests, have queens, sting, and are aggressive but there are some basic differences you can find. Hornets are almost always aerial nest makers. They like to be very high up in the sky for safety to protect their larva from animals on the ground. The nest is coated in layers of this paper-like material made of saliva and wood pulp to protect them from birds and other things that want to eat their larva.
If you suspect wasp or hornet presence anywhere near or on your property, contact wasp removal Guelph for quick and safe removal.
Meanwhile, yellow jacket wasps, for instance, build their nests in the ground, often in an old rodent burrow that has been abandoned. Like the hornets, a queen lives through the winter and then finds a hole and builds a small open nest. The larva grows on the insects they feed them and eventually metamorphosize into flying wasps. They continue to build the nest until the winter, up until now all the wasp workers have been sterile females so the queen does one more egg-laying and produces males and females capable of mating. These females will mate with the males who will then die along with the worker females and the queen and the other mated females will fly out of the nest to find a place to hibernate for the winter.
So how long do hornets and wasps live? It depends on a lot of factors but generally speaking a wasp or hornet that is a loner will usually hibernate in the winter and be able to lay their eggs. A wasp or hornet that is not a queen and simply a member of a large nest will die off in the winter.
Now, this may make you think you can just leave the problem be because they will be gone by the winter. Not so. The wasp queen remembers. They do have a memory, enough so that they can identify faces of humans and remember the human faces of people who wronged them. The queen knows your property was safe, she was there all summer and no one tried to get rid of her and her nest. You can bet she will be back next spring, bigger and better, and with a lot more queens by her side. So call a professional and get the nest removed, permanently.
