You Might Want to Check Your Fire Extinguishers

[TSO]

Those mud tubes are just a place to lay eggs... If the tube is sealed on the ends but you see a hole in the sides of the tube, the wasp already hatched and flew away.

I've actually watched the wasps building those tubes, saw them carry an apparently paralyzed or dead spider into the tube, then seal the ends of the tube with the spider inside, apparently as food for the young when they hatch.

Paper wasps are more aggressive, I'm not a fan of them ... But with the mud daubers, even being around the mud tubes with adults flying around, I've never felt threatened by them. I just wish they also stung and ate hornet's, can't stand Hornets.

Funny. I was on a service call this morning a few miles away to replace four thirty watt sirens, in enclosures, two at each gable end of a building. Not a peep out of any of them. All plugged with the same mud! I siliconed screen over the new sirens. It was with some hesitation as I was on an extension ladder and expected to get swarmed by wasps. I only found the remnants of wasp/hornets nests. Do those dirt things kill off the wasps and hornets?

 

[Industrial Toys]

We made a pre-emtive (sp?) strike against the first speaker housing spraying the grill with hornet spray. It wasn't required in the end.

I did have an extremely restless and awful night, I can only attribute to coming into contact with that spray.

 

[kthompson]

Had leaf blower that would not crank. Turned out to be dirt dabber had clogged the exhaust.

 

[bunyip]

Had leaf blower that would not crank. Turned out to be dirt dabber had clogged the exhaust.

Had the same with a chainsaw, right in the middle of the 'S' tube where it could not be seen and got the air intake too, had a handful of blisters before finding it/them.