Mud Daubers Nesting in the Shed
Yesterday I discovered a mud dauber nest attached to the leg of an old wire basket in the garden shed. Given the roundish shape of the nest, it probably belonged to a black and yellow mud dauber. Mud daubers are Sphecid wasps, about 3/4″ to 1″ long. They are solitary and relatively unaggressive, stinging only if handled or otherwise provoked. They build “nests” out of mud gathered from puddles or wet dirt after rain or watering. These “nests” consist of one or more cells, or chambers, in which the eggs are laid and then sealed, along with a paralyzed prey insect, often spiders. As the larvae develop, they eat the prey that was placed in their cell for them, before building a cocoon, and finally emerging as an adult the following spring.
The photo below shows the interior of the “nest” found in my shed. You can see the paralyzed spiders used as prey/food. They weren’t quite dead as several of them did move slightly when I poked them. At the bottom of the photo (out of focus – sorry about that) are two larvae, one busy eating a paralyzed spider. At the top of the photo you can see several cells, two with cocoons in which the larvae are pupating.
