How Do I Know if a Wasp is a Worker or Queen?

You can usually tell a queen wasp from a worker by three things: size, season and behavior. Yellowjacket and hornet queens are clearly bigger than their workers. Paper wasp queens, including red wasps, look almost the same as their workers, so you go by what the wasp is doing and when you see it. A wasp alone on a small new nest in spring is a queen. So is a big, slow wasp inside your house in late fall or winter, because queens are the only wasps that live through the winter. In summer, almost every wasp you see out foraging is a worker.

Queen vs. worker at a glance

How to tell a queen by size

Size works for yellowjackets and hornets:

• Eastern yellowjacket: Penn State Extension gives workers at about 12 mm (1/2 inch) and queens up to 18 mm (about 3/4 inch).
• European hornet: workers reach about 1 inch and queens up to about 1.3 inches, per Penn State. This is the "queen hornet" most Oklahomans find, since the European hornet is the only true hornet in North America and lives in northeastern Oklahoma.
• Bald-faced hornet and southern yellowjacket: the University of Florida notes that workers are noticeably smaller than the queen.

Season helps too. In early spring, before any workers have hatched, the only yellowjackets and hornets around are queens, so a single big one checking out the eaves, a woodpile or a hole in the ground is almost certainly a queen looking for a nest site.

Paper wasp queens: watch the behavior

OSU Extension notes that the paper wasp queen "is not obviously larger" than her workers. That goes for red wasps too. Use these clues instead:

• Spring, one wasp, small nest: a paper wasp nest the size of a quarter or golf ball with one wasp on it belongs to a queen. She builds the first cells and raises the first workers herself.
• Summer, many wasps: once workers hatch, the queen stays on the comb laying eggs while the workers come and go. The wasp that rarely leaves the nest is the best bet.
• Fall swarm on a building: the paper wasps gathered on tall buildings, towers and treetops in fall are mostly males, which cannot sting, and new queens looking for mates.
• Winter, indoors: a paper wasp crawling on a window or flying around a warm room in winter is a mated queen that came inside to hibernate.

Do all wasps have a queen?

Only the social wasps: paper wasps, yellowjackets and hornets. OSU Extension points out that most bees and wasps are solitary. Mud daubers, potter wasps, cicada killers and cow killers have no queen and no workers. Each female builds and stocks her own nest. See the Oklahoma wasp and bee ID guide to tell them apart.

How a wasp becomes a queen

Queens are raised, not born different. In a yellowjacket colony, the University of Florida explains, workers build larger cells in autumn, and the larvae raised in them become the next generation of queens. The queen also lays eggs that become males. The new queens and males leave the nest and mate, the males die soon after, and the mated queens look for a protected spot to spend the winter.

Paper wasps work a little differently. A nest is sometimes started by more than one female, but one of them becomes the only egg layer, and the others act as workers.

A queen wasp's year in Oklahoma

1. Late winter to spring: mated queens wake up as it warms and look for a nest site. Each one builds a small nest alone and lays the first eggs.
2. Late spring: the first workers hatch, take over building and foraging, and the queen settles into laying eggs.
3. Summer: the colony grows. OSU puts paper wasp colonies at about 20 to 75 adults and southern and eastern yellowjacket colonies at 1,000 to 5,000.
4. Late summer and fall: the colony raises new queens and males. Yellowjackets stay active into early December in Oklahoma, and fall is when their colonies are largest.
5. Winter: the old queen, the workers and the males die. Only the new mated queens survive, tucked under bark, in leaf litter, in wall voids or in attics. They rarely reuse an old nest.

Should you kill a queen wasp?

It depends on when and where. A queen alone in spring is the easiest wasp to deal with: she has no workers to defend her, and the nest is tiny. UC IPM notes that knocking down a new paper wasp nest early in the season can make the founding queen leave or join another nest. So if a queen is starting a nest on your front door frame or porch light in April, knocking it down early saves you a much bigger nest in July.

Later in the season, killing the queen is not a fix. The workers keep defending the nest and keep stinging until the colony dies off in fall. A summer nest near the house has to be treated as a whole. Our wasp control guide explains how.

A paper wasp nest out of the way of people can usually be left alone. Paper wasps hunt caterpillars, and yellowjackets eat many garden pests.

Queen wasps in your house

Large wasps buzzing at windows in November, January or March are overwintering queens. They come inside through gaps at the roofline, attic vents, around windows and along siding, and warm days or a heated room wake them up. They are slow and rarely sting, but avoid grabbing one barehanded. Catch it under a cup or vacuum it up, then seal the gaps so more cannot get in. If you keep finding them, a nest may have been inside a wall or attic last summer.

Wasp exterminator in Tulsa and Oklahoma City

Finding queens in the house, or a new nest going up by the door? Emtec Pest Control has been Oklahoma's wasp exterminator since 1979. We find and treat nests, including the ones in walls and attics, treat the eaves, soffits and porches where queens like to start new nests, and point out the gaps wasps use to get inside. We serve Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Owasso, Jenks, Bixby, Sand Springs, Sapulpa, Stillwater, Oklahoma City, Edmond and nearby towns. Learn about our preventative pest control or contact us.