Wisdom of the Wasp Queen: Strength, Structure, and Sovereignty

In this episode, through the lenses of animism, ecology, and magic, I explore the wasp queen as a powerful figure of embodied sovereignty, instinctive leadership, and creative structure.

We’ll start with natural history, honoring the form and function of the paper wasp, before moving into magical uses, energetic symbolism, and ways to work with abandoned nest materials and the deeper symbolism of nest-building.

I’ll also offer six suggestions for working with the wasp queen's energy, including boundary magic, manifestation, emotional regulation, and more.

Along the way, I’ll share personal reflections on growing up close to the land, challenging our cultural ideas about so-called pests, and the lessons we miss when we only value cute charismatic creatures.

Tune in and learn why the Wasp Queen isn’t a pest; she’s a Priestess!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Liminal Witch Podcast, a space for those who walk the edges, dance in the thresholds, and find magic in the spaces between. I'm Summer Starr. I'm a liminal witch, a ritual goods crafter, and I'm an intuitive reader here in Salem, Massachusetts. If you've ever felt like your practice doesn't fit neatly into one category or tradition, or if you feel pulled to the provocative edges of the unknown, then this podcast is meant for you. Welcome to episode five of the Liminal Witch podcast. First, apologies for the really long delay between episodes. Somehow I managed to get first a cold and then two flu strains, two different flu strains back to back. So I have been out of commission for a little while and my voice is still really funky. So I'm sorry for any leftover weirdness. I guess the upside is my body's doing some spring cleaning. So, you know, cheers to that. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the paper wasp. And if wasps weird you out and you're sort of already flinching and thinking about skipping to another episode, push through that fear and that bias and give these really amazing creatures a second look. I mean, I agree, wasps, they're not the standard charismatic, cute, fluffy creature. Personally, I think they're gorgeous, but they're intimidating and they're really mysterious and we kind of naturally want to give them a really wide berth when we see them. But when you take some time to learn about them, you really start to see them as teachers and builders, warriors, and strategists. And they can accomplish so much in their very short lives. They offer really strong medicine for those who are walking animistic paths. And to me, the Wasp Queen, she's that full embodiment and balance of both the divine feminine and masculine. She's not a pest. She is a priestess. So before I really dive in, I have to say up front, if you are allergic to wasps or bees or anything venomous and bitey, I am not telling you to go seek them out in person. Do not go near them or risk your safety if you are an at-risk individual. Remember, there are always ways to interact with animal spirits and various energies without having to actually physically engage with them. So just stay safe and know your boundaries. Okay, so I'm going to start with a little bit of a tangent in relation to creatures that we've labeled as pests. I know that wasps can seem scary, and they're often portrayed to be nothing more than just sort of an inconvenient and threatening little creature. But every creature on this planet has a purpose and a job, and I really want you to challenge any of those biases or assumptions or maybe even apathy that you might have towards these millions and billions of creatures that we share the planet with. And honestly, these creatures, they're generally the ones that are doing exactly what they're supposed to. And we're the ones living like assholes. As an animist and someone who grew up really close to the land, I was taught that everything has a consciousness. Everything has a spirit. And everything has something to teach you if you're really willing to stop and just listen and observe. So because of my father's heritage and where I was born and my mother's really deep involvement with Ogallala Sioux, I spent a lot of time in South Dakota on Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations. My mom made a big effort to make sure that I learned so much about their ways of viewing the world and our relationship to everything around us. I was taught to observe, to listen, and honor everything around me, especially while watching birds and insects or climbing trees, discovering really cool stones, and the feeling of the sun and the rain, and riding horses, and working with cattle or other livestock, and just spending time listening to streams and rivers. I was taught that everything could be medicine, good or bad, and every interaction offers a lesson. Even when I would be bitten by ants and spiders and other bitey pugs, My mom didn't panic and she didn't turn it into something bad for me. She would just tell me, ooh, it's giving you power. It's giving you medicine. Make sure you give thanks. So this full circle way of living and viewing the world around us, it really solidifies the fact that we're part of a planet and an ecosystem. We're not separate from it and we're not exceptional to it. Everything that we need to survive, both physically and spiritually, it can be found in and learned from all of our surroundings. And it's really important to be humble and to ask for guidance and to learn from various creatures and items that, you know, they might feel really insignificant or scary to you, or maybe you just don't even know that they exist or acknowledge them in your day to day and to be really open and willing and strong enough to hear the answers from them and to learn from them. So let's run with that sense of acknowledgement and appreciation for things that aren't fuzzy and charismatic because wasps are not, but they have serious lessons that they can teach us. So let's try to explore the magic and the lessons of the paper wasp and meet her with awe and humility instead of, you know, with fear and even worse than that, apathy. First, I'm going to start with some ecology and natural history. Because for me as an animist, seeking guidance from a creature or substance, you can't separate that from honoring its form, its function, and its right to exist. Paper wasps are social insects. They're known for making these really distinctive nests from a paper-like material that they make by crushing up plant fibers and mixing them with their saliva. They sort of look like an upside-down gray umbrella. It's not an enclosed nest with a single hole or point of entry. That's a hornet's nest. Paper wasps are very beneficial insects in a lot of ecosystems because they sort of play this dual role as a pollinator and natural pest controllers. So they feed on nectar, but they also really like caterpillars, beetle grubs, flies, and they feed all of that to their developing young. This makes them really vital ecosystem service providers because they help regulate those pest populations, and they can really help maintain ecological balance in gardens and wild spaces. They do have a lot of overlap with hornets and other types of wasps, but for the sake of this episode, I'm really just concerned with the paper wasp itself. So most people don't realize this, but the female paper wasps, they're the ones that run the show. They're pretty badass. They do everything themselves. They take on all the major colony roles, like nest building, foraging, caring for the young. The males, they really just exist to mate, and then they die shortly after that. New queens, queens that emerge that season. They're the only ones that can survive the winter by hibernating, while all of the other workers and the males, they will all die off by fall, along with the previous queen. Queens are born with a really high level of this specific protein that helps them to survive the winter and then lay eggs in the following spring. When they emerge in the spring, they don't reuse any old nests. Instead, completely by herself, when a queen comes out of hibernation, she immediately scouts for a spot and she starts to build a nest herself. She'll lay all the eggs for her first batch of workers. And the workers are also female only, but they are sterile. And she maintains and she continues to build the nest by herself until that first brood can really start pitching in with all the activities other than egg laying. Once her initial brood and that nest is established, which is usually by, you know, about late summer, she'll start to raise a handful of young queens. Well, lay and raise a handful of young queens at that point. And there are only a few females from each colony's late summer broods, which are going to become future queens. The males themselves, they're only born in the late summer or the autumn, again, to just breed with the young queens before the winter. Queens only live about 10 to 12 months, so less than a year. The active queen, who's in charge of the current nest, she's going to die off by the fall, which is about the same time her young queens are going to start to seek their winter shelter. And when they abandon their nest to hibernate, they pick sheltered locations like tree bark, cracks and crevices around structures, leaf litter sometimes, and you might even find them tucked into walls and attics or other dark, warm, man-made spots. So if you find a hibernating queen or wasp during the winter, obviously unless you are allergic or there's some actual threat, true threat to you, maybe just let them rest because they're just trying to sleep it off and survive until the spring. I'll list some other interesting facts because I just think they're very cool creatures. Other wasps like yellow jackets and hornets, they can be extremely aggressive. Like just you look at them wrong and they're just on you. But paper wasps, they're really not confrontational. They kind of only become defensive if you do anything to threaten their nest. And female paper wasps, they're the only ones that are capable of stinging. And unlike bees, which most people are aware of this with wasps, but bees can only sting once and then they die. But wasps, they can nail you multiple times pretty quickly. Wasps use what's called parallax to make images or to see essentially. So they'll use a side to side movement where you maybe see them hovering and kind of moving back and forth and side to side. And they're trying to size up what's in front of them and sort of build up this image of their surroundings to really learn about whatever their target is. So it might be nesting potential. So, you know, if you see a wasp kind of hovering around eaves and bouncing around, that's what it's doing. It's just trying to paint a picture of what's going on. And that's Sometimes they just want to get the size or shape of something. Humans, if you're just standing there staring at them, they might do it to you too. So, you know, if you see them dancing back and forth in the air, they're in the process of forming that really detailed image of their surroundings. They surprisingly have a very highly sensitive sense of smell, and they even have some taste buds. They rely on pheromones, like a lot of creatures, for, you know, really complex social interactions and social communication. That can include nest defense or, you know, attack responses and reproduction. And they do have a taste of really sugary foods. So that's why a lot of times in our wonderful garbage piles, especially if they're like soda cans and things like that, you'll see them hovering around garbage and getting in and out of garbage cans. Because they have a really strong sense of smell, they don't like things like peppermint, spearmint, basil, eucalyptus, cloves, thyme, citronella, lemongrass, things like that. They tend to avoid those. Something else that is really cool is there's a certain species of paper wasp in Brazil, and their venom was found to have the ability to kill cancer cells. So there's now research into developing cancer treatments based on certain wasp venom peptides, which is pretty cool. They also use an ant repellent chemical that they put around the petiole, which is that really narrow stalk that they use to attach their nest to a branch or another structure. So that deters ants from cruising in and taking over their nest and attacking their young animals. There are some bee colonies that also do this, but I always think this is so cool. They can cool the nest by fanning their wings and they kind of all do it together. And they'll even carry water in and place water around the nest to increase cooling through evaporation. And when they select nests, they select relatively protected locations because the nest is made of essentially a paper pulp. They chew up fibers and mix it with their spit. It's relatively durable to a point. I mean, you know, it is kind of a delicate structure, but it can take a bit of abuse from storms and wind. And, you know, assuming the queen did what she was supposed to and build a successful nest, the nest is pretty architecturally sound. So why did I just go through all that? I went through all of this because when we think about working with creatures and when we think about working with anything from the environment, it's really important to have a full depth of knowledge about what does this thing do in its day to day? You know, sort of what is its purpose? Not that it's up to us to assign a purpose, but why does it exist in nature? Can we answer that question? Do we know why? Because a lot of their daily routines and their habits and the way that they approach and view and interact with the world, other creatures, you know, other species that can teach us so much about ourselves and about what we're trying to accomplish in our own lives, as well as interacting with the environment around us and how to do that in a more harmonious and in a way that's better aligned with the environment as a whole. You know, again, to be part of that environment and not exceptional to it. So when you take the time to get to know all about the ecology and the social cues and just the whole natural history of whatever it is you're considering, whether it's a plant, an animal, that can really provide a lot of information for when we want to bring those things into our magical practices and into our energetic fields and learn from them. And so as we think about the magical lore and animism of working with a paper wasp, having an awareness of all those natural history elements can be really helpful and supportive. And as you're probably aware, wasps and their nests, they have a really strong energy and symbolism for warding, defense, individual power, empowering the collective, and even leadership. In this episode, I'm only going to focus on the use of abandoned nests. Again, abandoned nests. I'm not telling you to go out there and kill some poor creatures and take away their hard work. Wasps themselves, they are used in baneful magic, but that is not my focus. Especially because, again, it often involves killing the animal, which it is rare when I ever agree that that should be done in magical and ritual practices. And I'll just let that be. But I personally do not support the killing of animals for magical practices at all. So not surprisingly, people typically jump right to defensive or protective magic when they're working with wasps. You know, and that's great because there's a really powerful alignment there for those purposes. But it neglects so many interesting aspects about their natural history, kind of like I was mentioning, that we can draw on to really strengthen and expand our workings. So I'm going to offer five ways to work with and tap into and think about wasp energy. But of course, you're not limited to these. There are so many ways that you can use wasps in your personal practice. And as with anything, Your practice is your own, so structure it in any way that works best for you, as long as it maintains reverence and respect for the lives and the energies of whom or what you're seeking guidance. Okay, so for the first suggestion, let's just consider the energetic and protective boundaries, because again, that's kind of the aspect that most people are drawn to. So because of the wasp's territorial nature, You might want to consider working with nest imagery or abandoned nest material if you're doing any boundary or perimeter spells or any type of home warding. Using a piece of nest, for example, above a doorframe, that can create a boundary against harmful intention or meddling. Or you can even consider hanging an abandoned nest in your home that's near a point of entry. And, you know, what's kind of cool is you can always seal some of the existing cones that are in there. Put some protective herbs in there or other materia. You can even write petitions on little pieces of paper and roll them up and put those intentions in the cell of an abandoned nest and seal it if you want to seal it with wax or however you want to seal it to really help focus that energy of defense and protection in your home. Pulling on the scents that wasps like to avoid. So again, peppermint, spearmint, eucalyptus, cloves, lemongrass. You can use those scents to also energetically define your space because that mirrors their sensitivity to sort of scent-based territorial cues. But as always with any scent or essential oil, please use extreme caution and research it before you use it because a lot of them, like tea tree oil and eucalyptus, for example, they can be extremely toxic to animals, possibly even children. I don't have kids, but I assume that maybe they're a bit irritating or toxic sometimes to kids too. And sometimes even just the scent can cause issues. So please just research anything that you put in and around your home if there are any other animals or kids involved. So a second use that we could think about is related to manifestation. So wasps, they spend a lot of time assessing and planning and they build very intentionally. And if you think about it, if they don't follow a specific plan and work together as a cohesive unit, that nest might collapse or that queen might not be able to produce a successful brood. So tapping into this focused energy, it can really help us approach manifestation with better clarity. So asking things like, what is your ultimate goal? What are you trying to build? What needs to be built first in order for the rest to take shape? And do you want to build a community in order to make that happen or maybe to help it happen more easily? Or what are you wasting your time and energy on? Are you off track? Are you not actually doing the things you should be doing to get from A to B? And are you getting distracted and pulled in other directions? And a really important question, how hard are you willing to work to make that vision a reality? and what's needed to protect what you're building and manifesting. Meditating and journaling on questions like that while really sitting with and considering and resonating with how that queen wasp pursues her goals with discipline while also being willing to aggressively scare away any distractions, focusing on that and really sitting in those energies and sitting in those questions that can help support the path and the process of any workings that are related to manifestation. So a third use we can think about is related to architectural magic, which aligns closely with manifestation, but this is more about the actual structure and building rather than the end goal. So consider things like business foundations and planning, or if you're making creative blueprints or sketches or outlines for art and writing, like literal architectural design. And you can even think about this if you're building and designing an altar space. So as you're working on these things, you could add some abandoned wasp nest pieces into your spell work, attach them to various blueprints or manuscripts themselves. You could also draw and symbolically create a sigil that incorporates that hexagonal comb pattern of their nest. Or you can even find inspiration in the patterns and the angles of the wasp bodies themselves. They have some really cool looks and designs to them. And you can add this sigil that you've created to your documents, you know, on the documents themselves. Or you can even tape it under your work surface. So if you, you know, I know like putting paper under paper is going to give you weird lines if you're drawing. So just tape it under the table, under your work surface. You could put it under your keyboard. Or say you're, I don't know, doing something like remodeling or building a house, draw it on some of those foundational columns before they get covered up so it's sort of part of the bones of your house. You know, wherever you're drafting and building and bringing your vision into form, considering using that sigil in that space. A fourth use is related to solitary power in leadership. So again, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, queen wasps, they begin completely alone. So once they found a cozy place in the fall and winter, they entered into this liminal stasis or this period of hibernation until the spring. And they started to follow a plan that's encoded in their DNA and their energetic bodies with no instructions and no guidance. There's nobody there to teach them. They just do. So they follow their gut. It's that internal drive that tells them everything that they need to do without pausing to ask, why am I doing this? Or waiting for recognition or approval before continuing. They just do. So if you're currently walking a liminal path, maybe you're starting over after a personal reset. You might be navigating a tower moment or trying to create something new from the ground up. Or, you know, maybe you just want to lean into your gut feelings about your life and your practice. you can tap into that queen wasp energy because she can really offer some powerful guidance and remind you of the strength that comes with solitude and determination. She might be alone at first and not know where she's going or really what she's doing, but she follows her gut and that hard work produces a thriving community of workers that are just totally aligned with her vision. And she raises that next generation of queens with strength and determination. She provides leadership through the embodiment of a balanced divine feminine and masculine energy with creative generosity and that fierce inner discipline. A fifth use can be used for temperature and emotional regulation, which maybe sounds a little weird up front, you know, this dramatic wasp being used for emotional regulation. But if the nest is getting too hot, they can work together to cool it. by fanning their wings. And again, they can even carry water in to evaporate and speed up the process. So they're quite smart in how they can go about this. And if you're someone who struggles with emotional heat, things like anger, overstimulation, maybe you're going through a period of heavy burnout, maybe you deal with envy, lots of stress, things that just heat you up and cause that really imbalanced emotional heat, you can call on the wasp to ritualize and really help you balance these energies. So choose whatever visual might resonate with you. And it doesn't have to be these. But just as an example, maybe you picture yourself as the overheated nest. Or if you're able to compartmentalize that emotion, whatever it is that's out of balance, you can focus on cooling that directly. So imagine and visualize this community of wasp helpers that you have gathering around you in support and fluttering their wings to move the air and cool the temperature. And because of their natural ability to read pheromones and sort of have that instant communication with each other, you don't necessarily have to instruct them. Just have confidence that what you're putting out there and the help you're asking for and the de-escalation of whatever you're going through, their intuition and their knowledge and their ability to respond will help bring that down very quickly. And if you're somebody who needs physical stimulation to really support visualizations, Get a damp cloth to dampen your exposed skin and ideally sit outside in a breeze. You can just sit in front of a fan if you want to. If you're somewhere where you don't have access to either of those things or maybe you're just in the middle of a moment at work in the office and you don't want to look awkward or weird, just grab a piece of paper and fan yourself and just close your eyes for 30 seconds and just imagine that that's happening. Feel that colony's support in their helpful response to whatever heightened emotional heat distress you're going through and let them carry away some of that heat. As I'm going through these, I guess I'm going to go for a sixth, I can't say the word, sixth suggestion. I just feel like there's something coming through about this that I think is important to mention too. This last one is about really working with that wasp queen energy that can strengthen your will and your independence and sense of identity. So for me, when I think about the queen wasp and I observe them, there's a really healthy dose of Lilith's energy around the wasp queen. Because, I mean, she's so independent. You know, she's self-possessed. She's fully sovereign and has this aura of self-assured power. And I feel like if she was a human, just to anthropomorphize her for a minute, she'd be this wickedly seductive creature and she'd have this whole femme fatale thing going on. with no question that she's vibrant and confident. What's cool about it too, though, is if you take time to look beneath that strong presence and that strong front that she puts on, she is also extremely nurturing and highly caring and protective of her progeny. So in her very short existence, she builds and protects and gives everything she has in service of both her wasp community and even the local ecosystem through pollination and other pest control. As such an amazing creature that can do all of that and have that presence in such a short amount of time, she offers a wealth of very strong divine feminine energy that we can respectfully tap into. I always suggest, you know, anoint yourself with a ritual oil that resonates with sovereignty and protection and resilience and really feel into your core strength and picture being among your colony and that supportive structure that you've created. You could also think about making a spell around sovereignty using that hexagon shape, whether you create a comb-patterned three-dimensional shape, or even if you just draw the pattern to use for petitions. Each cell of that shape can hold a different aspect of your independence and your identity. You could define your boundaries and your intuition and your own self-expression and your self-trust and really... build into that shape these things that define you and make you feel independent and strong and really build up your own sense of identity. I'd recommend having a three-dimensional version of that and hanging that, whether in your altar space or, you know, maybe it's the first thing you see every morning when you wake up or just somewhere that is going to remind you of who you are and who you are working toward becoming. Okay, so hopefully those suggestions made sense. Hopefully you found this interesting and that some of this resonates with you. At minimum, I hope I've at least convinced you to really give wasps and other creatures like them a second look with a much more curious and appreciative eye because there's so much going on in nature and so much going on around us that we just don't take the time to appreciate and we tend to be apathetic. Oh, it's a pest. Get some, you know, nasty chemicals and kill it. Spray it until it dies. Light it on fire. I don't know. The things that people do to these poor creatures that, you know, again, a paper wasp, it's not going to harm you unless you go after it. So kind of a lesson in life as well. Respectful boundaries for everything and everyone. But anyway, if you find that you're interested in products to support any workings with wasp queens, this summer I'm going to be releasing several ritual items to help tap into these energies. They will be small batch limited release items. So make sure you follow my Instagram and please sign up for my email list. But I'll make sure any links related to this will be in this episode's description. So to wrap things up, the Wasp Queen, she's a really powerful ally if you're looking for really direct and precise action and support, especially if you're emerging from any period of stasis or liminality. But keeping in alignment with respect and awareness, I really encourage you only to approach her energy when you're actually ready to take charge of your space and build with confidence. Because, you know, you can absolutely rely on her if you need that strong support. But kind of similar to Lilith, she is a bit feisty. And, you know, just enter with respect and ask permission and see if she's willing to show up and help you through your practice and your process. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Apologies for my wonky voice. Hopefully it's better for the next one. As always, thank you for tuning in. Stay liminal. Thank you for listening. Until next time, embrace the thresholds, trust the in-between, and remember, your magic is always yours to define.