Black and Yellow Mud Dauber Nest

I found this mud dauber nest underneath an awning that’s attached to my house and as you can see from the holes the wasps that had developed there ate their way out once they became adults.

I opened up the globbed mass and found the remnants of cocoons in the empty cells that had contained developing wasps.  This particular solitary wasp is a black and yellow mud-dauber which gets its name from its black and yellow coloration.  It, like most mud-daubers, hunts, paralyzes and stores spiders in the cells of their mud nests where upon an egg is laid and then the cell sealed.  Once the egg hatches the resulting larvae feeds on the spiders and eventually develops into an adult wasp.

Inside I also found two fully developed individuals who apparently were unable to free themselves and ultimately died where they were born.