Rewilding My Lot

Now that the wasps here have finished raising their young, I’ve removed any nest that I could find. There were a couple in the front porch, one on the back patio, and several inside the garage near the door opening.

I found two kinds of nest: one for Paper Wasps and several for Mud Dauber wasps (respectively left and right in this photo).

These kinds of wasp are generally not a threat to humans, and in fact can be useful predators in the garden ecosystem, so I usually leave them to do their thing as long as they are not inside my house.

I have read that Mud Dauber wasps can prey on Black Widow spiders in order to feed their larvae and I did actually find a Black Widow spider very near one of the Mud Dauber nests in the garage not too long ago (she was evicted when I found her).

So of course, being me, I was curious to know whether there was anything interesting in any of the Mud Dauber nests I found. But there wasn’t — only a few larval body parts.