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Monthly Science: Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Emergence
An industrious pair of Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Wasps assembled their nest last August:
Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Wasp Nest – side view Their offspring began emerging in early July, with our first picture on 3 July. I’ll leave the image file dates in place so you can reach your own conclusions:
IMG_20190703_184657 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right We think a titmouse (a known predator) pecked some holes, including the upper hole on the middle tube, as they seemed to expose solid (and presumably inedible) chitin from the outside:
IMG_20190703_184647 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left More holes appeared in a few days:
IMG_20190709_172632 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right The irregular spacing along each tube suggests they don’t emerge in the reverse order of installation:
IMG_20190709_172623 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left Three days later:
IMG_20190712_181634 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right 
IMG_20190712_181625 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left Two weeks after the first holes appeared:
IMG_20190717_172908 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right 
IMG_20190717_172922 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left No more holes have appeared since then, so it seems one young wasp emerges every few days.
This nest produced about a dozen wasps, with perhaps as many launch failures. We’ll (try to) remove it and examine the contents in a few months.
We expect they’ll start building nests all over the house in another month …
Update: Fortunately for us, no nests appeared before the first freeze, so the wasps are holed up elsewhere for the winter.
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