NOT a lot of people know this, but the average bee buzzes through the air at something like 15 to 20 miles an hour, and can travel even faster for short periods when it feels it has to. Not so the common wasp, however. Although I cannot vouch for it from personal experience, it is said that the average human being can outrun a wasp; while it might seem like a slimmed down, sporty version of a bumble bee, it is not as strong a flyer, and on a breezy day it finds the going very tough indeed.
The wasp, reputedly, has some talent as a short range forecaster. According to the old rhyme, when
Gnats wheel round in airy ring
And angry wasps begin to sting, then, inter alia,
These, though cloudless he the sky,
Tokens are that rain is night
But the wasps real skills lie in predictions for the long range. They build their nests in almost any kind of cavity - in hollow trees or attics, or simply in convenient holes in the ground. In the latter case, when they build them high on the bank of a stream you may expect a wet summer, but if they do so near the level of the water, a dry season is indicated. And when the wasps go to bed early" - when they disappear earlier than usual at the end of summer - it is certain to be a mild winter.
Now it is not surprising, one might argue, that the insects have been endowed with these, very useful skills, since the weather is very important to them as a community. Ideally, they need a mild winter to survive in large numbers, a warm spring for the queens to awake from the hibernation and establish new nests, and a warm and humid summer to increase and multiply into a good swarm. Given something approaching these conditions, wasps are just as busy as the bees for most of the summer, but they change their habits noticeably with the approach of autumn.
Throughout the summer, the workers collect protein for their young in the form of small flies or tiny bits of carrion, and take it back to feed the larvae in the nest. The workers' energy requirements during this period are met by the larvae, who conveniently secrete a carbonhydrate on which the workers feed. In late August, however, the queen stops producing larvae, and as the colony begins to break up the workers have to find their carbohydrate somewhere else. It is at this time of the year that they display that apparently irresistible attraction to any sweet commodities in their vicinity.