Few weeks back, we saw a wasp outside our house. Initially, we were afraid of getting stung, but soon, its daily visits ensured us that it had no intention of hurting us. It began to build a mud nest on our window. We became more curious about this tiny engineer and observed the construction going on with great interest. Day after day we saw it bringing balls of mud, sticking it on the window and moulding it to make walls of its nest. Each compartment of the nest had one opening, which it sealed after putting a big caterpillar in it.
With all this happening just outside your window, you can't help becoming a bit keen on entomology! So, I found out some amusing things about this little wasps.
First things first! The insects which make nests of mud are called "mud daubers". We all must have come across mud tunnels of insects sometime. Mud daubers are solitary wasps who prefer not to be disturbed and live alone (not in colonies). They generally don't sting humans, but in case they do, it will be very painful. They are said to have a lifespan of around one year, in which they undergo complete metamorphosis.
The next curious thing about these insects is the caterpillars I told about before. We assumed that these caterpillars are the larvae of the wasp, and that it was building the nest for it to grow. But for our utmost surprise, we discovered that it is not so! Mud daubers actually lay eggs in the nest, and the caterpillars are put inside to serve as food for the mud daubers' larva.
Mud daubers usually store caterpillar or spiders for their larva to eat in its growth period. The caterpillars brought by the wasp to our house were really big, in fact, bigger than the wasp itself! Now that's cruel for the spiders and caterpillars, but mud daubers are considered useful in naturally getting rid of harmful spiders.
Another amazing thing is, of course, their nests. The wasp comes flying with a ball of mud, which it smoothens to a round cell with a hole. The mud dauber which visited our house made about a dozen celled nest all by itself. It shows remarkable skill in nest building, imagine a human making a 12-roomed house all alone!
Our mud dauber used to begin its work early in the morning. Inspite of our curious observations, it never showed the slightest aggression to us. Even when I almost collided with it (while doing some work), it simply hovered above me for a while and resumed its work. In fact, it was also quite used to our constant presence in the backyard, and never created any trouble for us or our cats (nature loves that harmony).
Watch the video below to see our energetic mud dauber at work, you will admire it!
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| Stages of nest buiding |
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