Are mud dauber wasps dangerous? Absolutely not!
When I began making my garden more wildlife-friendly a couple years ago, I never dreamt that wasps would be among my favorite visitors. I have since gotten a glimpse of the fantastic diversity of wasps that will appear when welcomed into the garden, and I’ve begun to appreciate how beautiful, interesting, and charming they can be. One endearing example showed up last year in late August.
It was a hot, dry summer here in Portland last year (once summer finally kicked in), and while my garden is pretty drought-tolerant, I did have to irrigate it occasionally. The day after one of those waterings, on August 22nd, I spotted a fierce-looking wasp checking out a wet patch of earth near my old rock wall. She was about an inch long. She had a jet-black body splashed with yellow, tawny orange wings, and a long, impossibly thin waist. She was Sceliphron caementarium, a yellow-legged mud dauber wasp, and boy, was she happy to have found some moist earth in this parched land.