How long wasps live depends on caste, species, and time of year, with workers living shorter and queens living longer. For social wasps like yellow jackets and paper wasps, workers that build nest, forage, and defend colony live about 12 to 22 days in summer due to hard work and predation, though some may live few weeks to a month. Queens live much longer, fertilized queens overwinter in sheltered places like attics, under bark, or in leaf litter, surviving winter in hibernation for several months, then emerge in spring to start new colony, and they live about 10 to 12 months total, from late summer when they mate until following fall when they produce new queens and die. Drones or males live only few weeks and die after mating in fall. For solitary wasps like mud daubers, adults live few weeks to few months, but lifecycle includes egg, larva, and pupa stages that overwinter. In general, wasp colonies are annual, starting in spring when queen builds small nest and lays eggs, growing through summer, reaching peak in late summer with hundreds to thousands of workers, and dying in fall with first frost, leaving only new fertilized queens to overwinter and start cycle again. So workers live weeks, queens live up to year, and colony lasts one season.
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