Giant yellow jackets in nest with regular sized

[Alienor]

I’m in eastern, Midwest us. Had to tear the siding off to get at a yellow jacket nest. With the regular sized workers were MANY very large, 1”, bees, with the same markings as the yellow jackets. They appeared to be sharing the same nest, the comb all looked the same as far as I could tell. Anybody know if these are two different species ? Never seen anything like this before. Thought the first one was the Queen, but they just kept coming, large and small. Thanks!

[kevinkk]

Without being an expert on wasps, I'd guess that since this is the end of summer, the larger wasps may have all been "queens" and would have
dispersed to overwinter.
As far as I know, no Hymenoptera share nests, unless they're parasitical, and they probably wouldn't be larger than a host or very numerous.

[AggieEnto]

Kevinkk is correct. In late summer and fall yellow jackets are ramping up the production of new queens that will disperse, mate with males, then find places to overwinter while the colony collapses and ceases.

The exception to this is in tropical areas where the typical temperate season of winter really doesn’t happen. In these conditions you can get multi year colonies and some will have a polygynous association of fertile and egg laying queens. This allows for absolutely massive colonies.