Nativeplantlover: Beautiful picture! I LOVE Eup's!!!! My husband, well he's given up on my ever regaining sanity, can't understand why I am so happy over a bit of mud with a Joe Pye that has actually managed to flower, escaping the jaws of a hungry deer. Little does he know I intend to populate the whole bit of mud with joe pyes, Jewel weeds and other fairly aggressive "weedy" natives....I want to see some pollinators :)!!!
The wasps do look like pottery....never thought of that! I have been tracked and stung very hard by a bald/white faced hornet so I do know that some of these insects can be extremely aggressive if there is a nest in the vicinity. The carpenter's pose a bit of a problem for us...we live in a log home and I explained to my husband that they tend to be territorial so we might get a few holes but at the same time the bees that make these holes will keep other carpenter bees away (in theory). Not sure that this theory is correct...either that or a bees territory is 5cm long
....we have LOTS of bee holes....but worse than this...the woodpeckers! Woodpeckers will come to the house and drill around the bee holes to get the bees out....THOSE holes are rather large! The way I see it is, the house isn't going to collapse and I think the holes add something to it....
Not sure if this is true, but I was told that carpenter's (particularly males) approach people closely because their eyesight is limited and they will try to investigate anything that moves.
Stone: When you say they didn't return do you mean you haven't seen any new nests made by this species? This probably is not true of all wasp/bee like insects but I've heard that with hornets, in particular, they will not build another nest in the vicinity of an existing nest whether that nest is active or not...apparently you can actually buy artificial hornet nests to deter hornets building nests around your house. Just wondering if the wasp is the same?
