Figure 15. Over-wintered nest in ACT. Photo courtesy of Jenny Conolly
Nest activity overseas
In its cooler native range of Europe and Asia, European wasp colonies have one queen and have an annual life cycle (Greene, 1991).In warmer areas of its native and introduced range, colonies will survive for longer than a season (Spradbery, 1991, Spradbery and Maywald, 1992). Colonies have over 100,000 workers.They also continue and produce offspring over winter and in spring begin worker production. These colonies may also contain multiple queens (Goodisman et al., 2001a, Goodisman et al., 2001b).Studies in New Zealand have reflected these factors. (Plunkett et al., 1989, Harris, 1996, Harris, 1991).