https://youtu.be/j8tR1RR9n04
By late fall, early winter most average size nests have died but occasionally a large nest found in a warm attic or wall void will survive longer if enough food can be found. As the nest reaches its maximum size in the fall, the queen will lay queen eggs and drone (unfertilized) eggs. Each nest will produce around 1000 new queens. These special eggs hatch and turn into virgin queens and male drone wasps. They leave the nest and navigate to special mating areas. It is believed that drones will not mate with queens from the same nest as they can visually recognize other individuals from the same nest/colony. This guarantees that interbreeding does not occur and genes are evenly disseminated. Once mating has taken place, the now fertilized queens find somewhere to hibernate over the winter months and the drones die. Now the nest is then essentially on countdown to dying. The timing of new queen production varies from year to year but it is corresponding so all the nests do it at the same time. This is to guarantee that there are enough drones and queens to effectively mate. As the weather gets colder by mid-autumn, food diminishes and the remaining adult wasps and old queens die off due to starvation.
http://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/deltabc-1.983313/blog-when-will-these-wasps-go-away-1.2107884