Reviewed by William "Willy" Vizcarrondo, NYS DEC Certified Commercial Pesticide Applicator C1825832. Updated September 23, 2026.
Short answer
No. UC IPM notes that yellowjacket and paper wasp colonies normally live only one season; the workers and the old queen die in fall and the nest is never reused. What comes back is a new queen the next spring, and she often picks the same eave, the same shrub bed or the same wall gap because the conditions that made it a good site haven't changed.
It dies, except for the new queens. Through spring and summer a colony grows from one queen to a few dozen paper wasps or, for yellowjackets, UC IPM's range of 1,500 to 15,000. In late summer the colony produces new queens and males, they mate, and the new queens leave to find a sheltered spot to spend winter. Frost kills the workers and the old queen, and the nest is left empty. That's why September wasps are so aggressive around food: UC IPM notes the fall shift from hunting protein for larvae to scavenging sugary foods, and the colony is at its biggest and hungriest right before it collapses.
Because it's still a good spot. UC IPM notes queens emerge in late winter or early spring to start new nests, and a queen looking for a site wants the same things last year's queen wanted: a sheltered overhang, a dry cavity, an undisturbed patch of ground under a shrub. A paper wasp nest under the same porch ceiling three years running is three different colonies. A yellowjacket nest in the same wall void is often the same unsealed gap in the siding letting a new queen into a cavity that was never closed. The old nest itself is not the draw; a queen won't move into it and paper wasps build fresh.
Take it down after a hard frost and close the gap. Once nights are consistently freezing, a paper wasp nest or an exposed hornet nest is empty and can be scraped off or knocked down. A nest in a wall void can be left, but the entrance should be sealed once activity has stopped for good, and any yellowjacket nest entrance in the ground can be filled. Then, in early spring, watch the same spots for a single large wasp coming and going; that's a founding queen, and a nest the size of a golf ball in April is the easiest one you'll ever deal with.
The repeat calls here are the same address, the same corner of the house, a year apart. A soffit gap on a Levittown cape, the space behind a shutter in Wantagh, the rock wall along a driveway in Cold Spring Harbor, a shrub bed in Massapequa Park. When Bobby Bugs treats a nest we point out the gap or the site that made it, so it can be closed before next spring's queen finds it. Wasp and hornet work carries a 6-month written guarantee.
Related
Yes, once there have been hard frosts. The colony is dead by then and the nest is paper. The one caution is a nest inside a wall or attic, where new queens sometimes overwinter nearby; open it in cold weather and vacuum anything you find.
No. Bald-faced hornets, which are a type of yellowjacket, build a new gray paper nest every year and abandon it in fall. The football-shaped nest you see in a bare tree in December is empty.
Because the site is still attractive to a new queen: sheltered, dry, sunny in spring and undisturbed. Sealing the cavity, changing the surface or keeping a small early-season nest from getting started is what breaks the cycle.
Still not sure? Call (516) 509-6001 and we'll tell you what you're dealing with.