Anyone who has ever tried making pottery realizes it isn’t
easy to create a uniform clay pot.
Imagine trying to create pottery without using your hands and you will
have to marvel at the ability of a small insect to perform such a task.
If you have ever seen dried mud
shaped like a rounded pottery jug attached to a branch of a plant or under an
eave, you have seen the brood cell of the aptly named Potter Wasp (Eumenes fraternus) . The pots are about an inch wide. After
creating the mud pot, the female wasp then fills the nest with food before laying a single egg inside and then
sealing the opening shut. In order to
provide a fresh food source for the wasp larva that will eventually emerge from
the egg, the female wasp paralyzes but doesn’t kill several small insects or
caterpillars that she seals inside the pot.
Small green inch worms are often the target prey. After the larva develops, it emerges from the
clay brood cell as an adult wasp.
Adults are solitary wasps and are considered
beneficial for their role in helping to control caterpillars in the
garden. Adult potter wasps feed on
nectar, such as the one below, spotted on a flowering dill plant.
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