In many cooperatively breeding vertebrates and primitively eusocial insects individuals choose to remain as helpers throughout their lives despite being capable of independent reproduction. An interesting question that arises is whether such a helping role makes these individuals become reproductively constrained due to ageing and/or helping behaviour (thus are left with the only option of procuring indirect fitness benefits) or whether they can revert back to direct reproduction (and thus gain direct fitness in the future). Here we investigated the effect of age and tasks performed by helpers in the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata on their ability for future independent reproduction, by isolating every wasp in the colony and giving them equal opportunity to initiate their own nests and lay eggs. We found that wasps which initiated nests and laid eggs were significantly younger and fed more frequently as adults than wasps which did not initiate nests. However, we did not find any significant influence of the tasks performed by the wasps on their ability to initiate nests and lay eggs. We conclude that ageing and receiving less nutrition rather than working for their colonies, constrain individuals of this wasp species for future independent reproduction. Because future direct fitness and present work towards gaining indirect fitness are not incompatible, we expect to find that although wasps may attempt to gain opportunities for direct reproduction as early as possible, they are nevertheless likely to keep working for the colony until they succeed.