According to Mr. Ray, a warm winter is one of the factors that allow wasps to form these nests.  Most yellow jackets don’t survive the cold months because they freeze or starve to death.

“The queens are the only ones who have an antifreeze compound in their blood,” Mr. Ray said. “So normally, a surviving queen will have to start a colony from scratch in the spring. With our climate becoming warmer, there might be multiple surviving queens producing more than 20,000 eggs each.”