When Do Wasps Die in Autumn?
By Wespenprofis.ch · Reviewed by:Fachbewilligung Schädlingsbekämpfung VFB-S · Updated: 3 July 2026
At a glance
With the first cool autumn nights, usually from October onwards, the social structure of a wasp colony breaks down. The old queen and all the workers die within a few weeks. Only the new, already mated young queens survive, by retreating individually into a frost-free place to overwinter.
The tipping point in autumn
As long as the queen is alive and laying eggs, a wasp colony holds together: the workers feed the brood, defend the nest and gather food. As temperatures fall in autumn, this order is lost. The queen stops laying eggs, the last brood cells produce the young queens and drones, and after that the colony declines rapidly. In the weeks beforehand, usually in September, a colony is often still conspicuously active, because there is hardly any brood left to look after and the workers increasingly search for sweet food. For how this sequence fits into the season as a whole, see our guide to the wasp season in Switzerland.
Why the old queen and the workers die
Neither the founding queen nor her workers are built to survive a winter: they have not laid down any reserves for a period of cold torpor and die within a few weeks of the first frost. As explained in our guide on how long a wasp colony lives, a colony therefore really does last only a single season — from its founding in spring to its collapse in autumn. This applies equally to all native social wasp species and to hornets, even though the exact timing can vary somewhat depending on the weather and the altitude.
What the young queens do differently
The newly hatched young queens leave the nest, mate with drones from other colonies and then look for a frost-free place to overwinter on their own — dead wood, cracks in walls or dry cavities in the ground, for example. There they fall into a winter torpor and use hardly any energy until temperatures rise again the following spring. They alone carry the colony’s genes into the next year, while every other member of the colony fails to survive the winter.
What this means for you
A nest whose occupants die in autumn is never used again — not even by the surviving young queens, who always found a new primary nest in spring, usually somewhere else entirely. Whether an empty nest on your house should be removed anyway is covered in our guide to wasp nests in winter, and why re-occupation is impossible is explained in our guide on whether wasps return to an old nest. If your nest is still active during the current season and the situation is unclear, a professional via /wespennest-entfernen can help, rather than intervening yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Do all wasps die in autumn?
Almost all of them. The old queen and every worker in the colony die with the first cold snap. Only the young, mated queens survive, hidden away in sheltered spots.
Why are wasps often especially bothersome shortly before they die?
In late autumn, workers can barely find any food for the brood and are strongly drawn to sweet food and drinks outdoors — this seems more intrusive, but it is a sign that the end is near.
What happens to the nest when the colony dies?
It is abandoned and never occupied again. The following year, a new queen always builds her own new nest in a different place.