working from home distractions #383

[darkoshi]

Trying to convince a mud dauber wasp not to start building a nest in the dog house.

While looking to see where I put the fake wasp nest (small paper bag with plastic bags inside adjusted into an oval shape) for deterring real nest building, or whether I need to make a new fake one, I find a real mud dauber nest on the brick wall right next to where the fake wasp nest used to hang. So maybe it wasn't effective after all... or maybe that nest got built after I took the fake one down...

Comments

[marahmarie]

We had mud dauber nests on the front porch when we moved in, more active than not until last year when most of them got abandoned so I thought, "Great, I'll leave the empty nests up since I've heard that discourages wasps from building any new nests nearby". Nope. Got another nest last summer nearby (just inches away from) an abandoned one. Definitely chalking that bit of advice up to "ymmv".

[darkoshi]

I try not to bother the nests if they're in an area that doesn't cause any problems. From what I read, mud daubers eat spiders, so if you've got too many spiders...

But then again, the nests don't look nice on the house or the porch and if they're abandoned, no point in leaving them up. So I did knock some down which seemed empty, towards the end of winter.

The fake nest did seem to work when I first used it... it's supposed to simulate a different kind of wasp, or hornet's nest. I have some windows that open outwards with the screens on the inside. The mud daubers were hanging around that area and getting stuck between the glass and screen when I closed the window. After putting up the fake nest, that stopped happening.