Its a mad world! Several years ago I had this opportunity to watch a potter wasp build its nest right from the first mound of clay. My room was on the second floor and right beside my bed was a window overlooking a large jack fruit tree. Wasps flying about the house is a very common occurence, but to see one hovering 2-3 feet from my face wasn't. It chose the bottom corner of the window for its nest having decided that I don't display any predatorial instincts.
The brown-yellow wasp brought in small mounds of clay from the soil right beneath the window and started building its nest. But it wasn't until it dropped one mound by mistake that I paid greater attention. As it brought the clay in, the mound slipped and dropped barely touching the side of one of the window bars. The mud stuck right there with its tiniest surface touching the bar on the side and nothing beneath. Intrigued by this super glue I watched the wasp for the next half hour.
The wasp had a simple routine - suck the fluid of the jack fruit tree leaf's midrib, then go down to collect the mud and back to its nest site to place them and shape if necessary. It just looked like adding bricks to a wall. I also noticed that the wasp did not go the same leaf more than twice! Despite the super glue it created the mound was quite soft for it to shape the pot.
When the pot was almost complete there came the supplies - a couple of spiders and one other 'bug'. They all seemed dead (though reading about them later told me that these could just have been paralysed) and they all went into the wasp's magical cauldron. Once this was done, the neck of the nest was built. It brought 3 mounds of clay, placed it on the opening and then bent its abdomen over the opening going round and round over it to create the neck of the pot.
It seemed rather odd to me then that it did not lay the eggs first before creating a neck for the neck was too small for the wasp to enter. It did seem like the wasp just dropped the egg into the pot (I thought the shell of the egg must be really strong with super glue!). But it didn't make sense for I've seen potted nests with the neck on the side. However, the wasp laid its eggs the same evening (seemingly dropped into the pot) and then covered the entrance. I read about it much later that the wasp suspends the eggs from the entrance so that it hovers just above the food so that the larvae falls right on the food when they hatch.
