Pests We Treat - 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.