A _L_ P wrote:
...
Another thing that should concern anyone interested in home gardens
and the agricultural and horticultural industries is that wasps
present a very real threat to bee hives. Without bees, pollination
of most common crops is extremely poor. Wasps steal honey. Bees
have to spend time defending the entrance to the hive instead of
gathering nectar while at the same time their stocks are being stolen
and their numbers reduced in the attacks. .

Wasps are only a problem for beekeepers in late summer when their normal
food sources are disappearing. Robbing is minimised by reducing the hive
entrance size so it's easier for the bees to defend.
Strong colonies are barely affected (indeed the beekeeper removes far more
honey over the season that wasps could ever do). Weak colonies are robbed
just as much by bees from stronger hives, and as the colony is probably weak
through varroa-mite infestation it may be no bad thing if it does die out.

Eventually a hive is so
weakened that it cannot survive through winter, let alone be in a
condition to quickly build up to increasing the swarm to the point
where it can be divided to make another hive with a young queen.

It is the *old* queen that goes off with a swarm to found a new colony,
leaving behind an unhatched queen cell in the original hive.

--
Reentrant (a beekeeper)