Return on an investment: Mud Daubers Generation II

Holes left by emerging Mud Daubers

Last May and June were the wettest on record in the Home Bug Garden. Rain, rain, rain makes for too many mosquitoes, soggy basements, gloomy bug gardeners, and lots of mud. But, mud has its uses.

Young Generation II male A. waldenii

The most obvious beneficiary was an entertaining and industrious Mud Dauber Wasp Ancistrocerus waldenii (Viereck, 1906). Whenever the sun would briefly appear, she zipped around scooping mud from the moss under the fountain, piling the mud into an aggregation of cells, and slaying caterpillars to fill the cells and feed her young. Now her industry (and, we like to think, the umbrella we made to protect her nest) has paid benefits of at least a dozen new wasps that have emerged over the last week. I call that a happy ending and

A Happy Beginning for the new wasps