BK 4BR Park Vue Fully Stocked

The Nethermead Arches is a great place for wasp condos. The bridge provides protection from the sun and rain, so organpipe mud-dauber wasps, Trypoxylon politum, build their nests upon its vertical surfaces. Each tube here is made up of several separate cells. An egg was laid in each cell with a cache of paralyzed spiders for the wasp larva to eat upon hatching. I assume these nests were made last year, and that the wasps just recently emerged this spring. This big blue-black wasp with the very thin waist is beautiful and rather harmless (unless you’re a spider), even though it looks quite fierce.

Compare these wonderfully architectural nests with the much more free-form mudpile of the black and yellow mud dauber wasp, which is currently nesting in my backyard, the Back 40. Also consider the completely other material differences with the paper nest of the bald faced hornet.