 While there aren ’ t many external morphological differences between queens and workers there are some internal traits that can be signals of a wasp ’ s social status . It has also been found that caste determination is irreversibly determined by temperature during the immature stages of development . In one experiment , some wasps emerging in June were kept in long day chambers , or chambers set at 26 ° C with 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness . These individuals had larger and more active ovaries as compared to those who were incubated in short day chambers , which are set at 22 ° C with 14 hours of light and 10 hours of darkness . It is thought that this phenomenon may occur because of a juvenile hormone secretion that determines the castes and a suppression of the workers ’ ovaries by environmental or hormonal factors . 
