If you have a wasp nest in your garden, you can rightly fear an invasion of striped stinging insects at some point - namely when the larvae hatch from their pupae. In order to be prepared for it, some background knowledge is not wrong.
The wasps are first in the egg, then in a pupa
The wasp nursery
In this article we are primarily concerned with the hatching of the wasp larvae from the pupation - because that is when the big wasp invasion takes place. Of course, wasps hatch twice in their lifetime.
From egg to larva
Wasps finally hatch from the egg for the first time. In the spring, the young queen wasp lays the foundation for the wasp nest, for which she looks for a suitable, cave-like shelter. This can be an abandoned mouse or mole burrow, a pile of rocks, a truss, or a hollow tree stump. She lays her eggs in the first created brood cells. It takes about 5 days for the wasp larvae to hatch.
To remember:
- Wasp first hatches from the egg, then from the pupa
- Time in the egg lasts about 5 days
The developmental stages of the larvae
Once hatched, the wasps enter the larval stage. This is strictly separated from the adult stage - both in terms of lifestyle and time. The pupation is between the two stages.
How long the time as a larva lasts is not set in stone. The duration depends on the conditions in which the larva can develop. One of these is the food supply. The more proteinaceous insects there are around the worker bees, the faster and stronger the larvae can grow. The nest temperature also affects the duration of the larval period. On average you can count on about 9 days.
During the larval stage, the wasp larvae grow and molt several times, five times to be precise. They shed the old skin backwards. During the entire larval period, they stick to the honeycomb cell with their own secretion.
When they have passed all the molting stages and grown well, the larvae pupate to develop into the wasp capable of flight. To do this, they spin a firm doll around their bodies from the spinning glands on their heads that are specially provided for this purpose. How long the metamorphosis in the pupation lasts now depends on the temperature in the nest. In warm conditions, the larvae can have matured into a wasp after just 12 days. When it's cooler, it takes up to 20 days. Incidentally, the wings only develop in the last 2 to 3 days.
To remember:
- By time in the egg: approx. 9 days larval stage
- After 12 to 20 days pupal stage
In order to be able to estimate when a new colony of wasps will emerge from the nest, it is of course necessary to identify the shelter in advance. This is not so easy, because a generation of wasps only lasts for one summer. An old wasp nest is usually not reused the following year. However, in the spring you can of course examine possible hiding places, such as roller shutter boxes or mouse burrows, for wasp honeycombs and any eggs and larvae.