Photo Album: Mud daubers build huge nest in bedroom - Bee & wasp control and removal in Bayville, NJ
Mud dauber nest in Bayville, New Jersey
After going upstairs to examine the bedroom, I saw distinctive nests on the window sashes, and I knew then and there what type of insect had infested the bedroom: mud dauber wasps. These wasps, also known as dirt daubers or mud wasps, get their name from building ("doubing") their nests out of mud. The most common mud dauber in New Jersey is the organ pipe mud dauber. These daubers have a thin waist, and are black with blue wings and white "stockings" on its hind legs. They build vertical, parallel rows of cells where the finished product are cylindrical tubes that looks like a pipe organ or a pan flute. Apparently, these wasps were inadvertently given access to the bedroom after the painter left the window partially open in order to air out the room after he had painted it. Mud daubers are solitary wasps. Unlike social wasps, the queens care for their own young and have only a single nest, and their focus is on stinging and paralyzing spiders and other insects to feed to the larvae in their brood nest. These wasps are non-territorial and are not aggressive toward humans unlike paper wasps, yellow jackets, and other nest-building social wasps. These docile wasps will rarely sting unless you try to squish them or they get caught in your clothing.
Mud dauber nest removal in Bayville, NJ
Old inactive mud dauber nests should be removed since some species reuse old nests or, even worse, the nests may be adopted by more dangerous, aggressive wasp species. Also, remaining insect carcasses in the nest can be a food source for beetles. When removing the nests, I like to use a putty knife, which allows me to scrape off most of the nest without damaging the underlying wood or other surface. If the nest has round holes, the wasps have already emerged and the nest is probably inactive. Most of the time, I find these nests empty with emergence holes, such as what I found in the first picture. However, when I started to remove one particular