Wasp Rescue

Picking up the mail this morning I found a wasp in the front door. I put her up on an envelope, so no one is stepping on her and brought her inside.
It is raining since four days and the temperatures has changed from 28°F to 50°F.
For a diapausing wasp this brings some conflict and it shows the significant impact climate change has.

After a long year of caring for her swarm the queen wasp by the end of summer is releasing less pheromones. Those biological messengers are needed to ensure that the larvae during the main season is infertile and only labour wasps are in the hive for a smooth flow.

By the end of summer male drones and young queens are born. They are fertile and ensure the survival of the hive until the drones and labour wasps are dying by the end of fall.

Only the young queens survive the wintertime. They are producing an internal anti-freezing mixture to survive cold temperatures. How cool is that please? Her body is crumbled and the entire metabolism is closed down. They seem to be dead.

The young queens are hiding in stacked wood piles, rooftops or dead trees where they are trying to survive the cold, predators and humans burning wood.

With temperatures changing like they have in southwestern Germany lately, the diapausing wasp is mistakingly waking up too early. Their metabolism is firing up slowly and they are trying to find nectar, which in February is rather bad. If not getting help from an animal lover the wasp might die due to starvation.

After picking up the wasp my first goal was to check if she was still alive. They will slowly move their limbs when awakening.
It is not good if they awake too early because they need a lot of energy and will starve.
To avoid that you can offer the wasp a piece of sugar with a few drops of water. I also offered a piece of pear, because I had a hive living with me last year and they loved the pears.

Afterwards I recognized that she got strengthened a little bit, which is good in one and bad in another way because she has to go back to diapause until it is the right time to awake.

You can help your wasp doing so by creating a space where she is cooling down again and safe from dangers.
I grabbed a wooden box I found and put some arolla pine chips in it. Don't use paper towels as the wasp can begin to mold because it is keeping the moisture. Arolla pine chips are naturally anti mold.

Place the wasp carefully in it and find a safe, cold spot like in a basement, shed, under the roof or balcony where she is protected from rain and other dangers. She can keep diapausing now and might survive.

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