Pandora’s Wasp Nest

So there was a wasp that started building a nest of what looked like mud, on the front of the stucco garage. I was shaped like a cylinder or tube. Every day she would open it up on one end and cap it off at night. I guessed she was regulating the temperature for the eggs and/or larvae inside. I wasn’t sure if she spent the night in there or not.

Then the other day she kind of doubled the size of it and I figured it was time to take it out before someone got stung.

I got some spray and figured I would soak the nest and kill everything inside it, after all, the can said it “takes care of the whole nest”. Then in the morning I was going to open it up and see if she was in there and what else was going on in that nest.

Last night I gave it a good soak and then this morning with a quick pry from a nail remover it was off and in shambles on the ground.

At first I was disappointed. It seemed to have been vacant. So I got a little closer to the shattered nest and found a little driveway of horrors.

What did I find? Spiders and a lot of them! All sorts of colors and nice and bloated. They were not dead either. I’ve seen enough nature shows to figure out she had stung them just enough to keep them catatonic, but fresh and alive.

Then I realized, thank God she wasn’t in there. Obviously the spray did not take them out. Maybe it works on paper wasp nests, but it never penetrated the hardened mud.

I ended up only seeing one larva. It would have been quite the feast.

First off, I thought this would end in, at the very least, a fall off the ladder and a swelled-up wasp-face. Wrong! Second, I thought I had already seen some absolutely nasty things in my life. Wrong again!

Growing up on a farm, there was way too many things that built a nest, burrowed, or otherwise crouched in a nook until you messed with it. Good to take it out early tho, that’s for sure!

That could seriously be my worst nightmare.

Joel

Nice photo’s Mike. They turned out well.

Anyone know if this is the same wasp that fills my ground hole on my outdoor outlets with mud? Or the recessed screw holes on my battery recharger?

Google Mud Dauber nests and see if that is what is building the nests.

I Googled it after my write up and these things are pretty ‘harmless’ compared to most bees and wasps.

Pretty interesting post. All of that spider meat for one larvae… wow. I wonder why spiders? Easier to keep alive, better tasting?

its a survival trait used by wasps. they either sting and paralyze an insect and bring it back to the larvae to get eaten alive, or just insert the egg into an insect and the larvae hatches and eats its way out of the living insect. id assume they usually pick spiders due to body mass.

Am i the olny one that sceramed a little looking at those spiders? Please no more pics of spiders i’ll faint

Yuck that is so Nasty I hate spiders
I hope ya killed them

ish ish ish…

Too bad they don’t prefer woodticks.

trying to eat pizza for breakfast and made the mistake of checking this thread out…..pizza is going down hard now. thanks

Sorry I didn’t start off the post with a warning about the pictures, but it wouldn’t have been much of a post without them.

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Yuck that is so Nasty I hate spiders
I hope ya killed them

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I dumped them on the side of the house. I imagine in their state of immobilization that they made good meals for the ants or whatever else came across them.

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Am i the olny one that sceramed a little looking at those spiders? Please no more pics of spiders i’ll faint

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I didn’t realize there are so many Lilly livered Sissies on this site.

Spiders are very good hunters also, they’ll throw up a web where moths, knats, and other flying insects tend to pass through to catch their meals. Once I saw one rolling up a moth like the spider on Lord of the Rings was rolling Froto into its web. It was very cool to watch.

Mud daubers prefer ambush spiders like crab spiders.