Cottage Life's Green Bundle by Cottage Life

Author:Cottage Life [Cottage Life]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780991855339
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

CREDIT: Richard Bartz

Before you do anything, Goulet says, make sure that the nest doesn’t belong to the giant European hornet (look for its reddish-brown head, shown in photo above), a non-native with a very nasty sting that has been spotted in Ontario in recent years. In this case, call in a pro. —May 2009

At our cottage on Gloucester Pool this August, we found hard clay mounds in the shape of bricks on the pedal of the pedal boat. When we broke the mud pieces off we discovered small cavities inside. Each cavity had a brown capsule and some had tiny spiders. The spiders appeared to be alive, but not very active.

My brother suspects the cavities have mud wasps in them. My mother was wondering if they’re dock spiders. I’m sending some of the cavities and their occupants to you. Can you tell us what they are?

—Mary Dooley,Toronto, Ont.

Your brother’s right. What you sent us were black-and-yellow mud daubers (Sceliphron caementarium), a type of digger wasp, in their pupal stage. According to entomologist Bob Anderson at the Canadian Museum of Nature, adult mud daubers collect mud to build a series of cells or cavities. Since their mouths are only about 3 mm in diameter, this is a painstaking process, notes Lubomir Masner, a wasp expert at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and it takes about a week for them to make the whole structure. The wasps capture spiders, paralyze them with a sting, and deposit them in the cells. Then they lay their eggs, one to each cell. The eggs eventually hatch into larvae, which feed on the spiders. The larvae overwinter as pupae and emerge in the spring as adults. —Winter 1991

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