October 27, 2003

Daylight savings time sure makes a difference on the work schedule and the amount of work I can get done. I moved the work light from the new shop over to the machine shed and once I had a light source I cut all the power to the machine shed so I could start stripping the electrical system out of the shed. The electrical system consisted of 5 8-foot industrial fixtures, 5 outlets, and a couple outside fixtures. As you can see I was able to get 4 of the 5 fixtures removed and most of the rest of the electrical boxes and conduit. The picture below shows the single fixture remaining and the panel on the left side of the picture.

I did get a bit of a surprise when I started taking down the light fixtures. All summer while I worked on the foundation I noticed a lot of wasps working the mud that was left from the puddles that plagued me, but I could not find a next anywhere. I somehow knew that they were in the shed and thought I'd find a huge football shaped nest but as it turned out I cound a couple dozen like the one in the picture below. The fixtures were full of them and although they did not contain wasps I was careful opening fixtures just in case. I did a little research on them and found an interesting article at the link below. As a size comparison I am holding a six inch Crescennt Wrench, this nest must have held at least 6 or 8 wasp eggs.

Mud Dauber Wasps

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