Hobbies And Interests
Appearance
Mud daubers vary in color from plain black to blue-black to black with yellow stripes. Their coloring can be similar to other common wasps, including the yellow jacket. However, mud daubers have a distinctive long, narrow waist called the petiole. The petiole separates the mud dauber's thorax and abdomen.
Social and Nesting Behavior
Yellow jackets, hornets and other common wasps are categorized as social wasps. They create a colony, headed by a female queen. Social wasps construct their colonies out of paper, which is produced by chewing on scraps of paper, cardboard and wood. Mud daubers are a solitary wasp, which means they do not create colonies. Instead, they construct nests out of mud, creating elongated cells in which their young develop.
Care of Young
Social wasps reproduce via the single queen wasp. Adult wasps within the colony care for the young wasps, bringing them live insects to eat as they develop into adults. Social wasps are involved in every aspect of the development of their young; mud daubers are barely involved at all. Mud daubers deposit one egg per mud tunnel. They catch spiders and stuff them into the tunnel alive, then seal the tunnel and abandon the egg. As the egg hatches, the larva feeds on the provided spiders and eventually works its way out of the nest.
Aggressiveness
Yellow jackets and other common wasps are known for their fierce defensive behavior. Social wasps will attack anything that disturbs the colony. Yellow jackets in particular are known to simultaneously bite and sting to defend against a threat to the colony. Scavenging wasps may also sting if their food source is threatened. Mud daubers, on the other hand, are not aggressive. They do not defend their nests, and only sting when directly handled or accidentally trapped.