Thursday, August 25, 2011

Bug house -  Greene County, Virginia 

Last week my wife discovered this miniscule house on the leaf of a Hosta plant on our front deck. It is made from material very similar to a mud dauber's nest, but is much too small to accommodate a bee. It appears to be a single-family dwelling, neatly constructed and ideally situated with a large green front yard. There was no sign of the owner.

If anyone knows anything about this nest and its occupant, please leave a comment. I would be very interested to hear about it.


UPDATE: Thanks to Robert (see comments) I think we have a positive ID. This is the nest of a Potter's Wasp. This particular wasp was not a particularly skilled potter, but see this photo of a very pot-like nest from the Wikipedia article

4 comments :

  1. Edd that looks like a Potter Wasp nest. That certainly is tiny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter_wasp . Did you feel any of that earthquake?

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  2. Hey, Robert--nice to see you back. Hope all is well with you.

    We live about 25 or 30 miles from the town of Mineral, which was the epicenter of the quake but we fortunately sustained no damage or other problems. I was at work when it happened and the building really shook and rattled. We had another tremor pass through during the night last night--woke me up but it was much less intense than the first one on Tuesday.

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  3. I just looked at the Wikipedia article that Robert suggested and Potter's Wasp it is. We saw a wasp with red markings flying around and I guess that was the Potter's Wasp, but it seemed huge in proportion to the nest.

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  4. I have never seen one, glad you could ID it.
    Also glad you made it through the quake, next the hurricane.

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