Mud Dauber Problem

Mud Daubers ... we call 'em dirt daubers here in East Texas ... have taken over my hangar. They especially like hot, dry places. I have covered all the obvious vents, etc on my RV-3, but these critters like to get anywhere they can and build a mud nest. I have seen them crawling into my flaps and, who knows, where else. I worry that I may have missed something and one will cause me untold grief someday.

Has anyone tried the "wasp traps" that are available at Home Depot, Lowe's and Walmart? I've been thinking of hanging several around the hangar to lower the population, but I have read that they are mostly ineffective. Any suggestions to help solve the problem?

I noticed that they have been particularly active in the Houston area the past few weeks as well.

My answer? Fly every day - keeps them from getting a toe-hold.... ;-)

I had the same problem last year. I was taking my -6 down for paint, removing control surfaces, wing tips etc., found a couple baseball size nest in each wing attached to the ribs. Worst was the 3-4 pounds of dirt in the ailerons, each one. and yes the flaps were loaded. Kinda scary to have that much weight collecting in the planes control surfaces.

Paul's right, fly every day. Mine had been sitting for a while.

My answer, I built a 1700ft grass strip in the yard this winter, building a well enclosed hanger W/ ac-heat after Osh, painting the plane. Then I will be able to fly almost every day.

I haven't found a trap that works yet, sure hope someone can chime in that has.

Bugs can cause lots of problems. I see a recent poster surmises a bug got into his pitot tube. I had some bug make a webby, silky nest in the static port of a Piper that I had. Not a problem until I washed the plane and went flying. The water plug made the airspeed, altimeter and vsi all go wacky at once. It took a while to sort things out and fly "seat of pants". Very clear VFR day. If it was in the soup, well I don't want to think about it.

critter gitter

Fill a sandwich size ziplock about 1/2 with water; toss in a coupe pennies. Hang these around any enrty/exit paths, and the dang things will stay away. Seems it confuses 'em into thinking there is a giant predator in your hangar...something to do with their eye construction. Works on flies too.

Carry on!
Mark

Try This, I hang about 6 to 8 of them inside my hangar and they are full of all kinds of wasps. I have also hung them from my airplane. Really guys, these things work.


http://www.horse.com/item/starbar-fly-stik/SLT300094/

Electric bug zapper. Mud daubers love them. When a fly hits it you get a quick POW! and it's done. Mud daubers kinda go bbbbbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!! Fun for all ages

Hey, I guess if it keeps the daubers out of the "Aviation Plasticized Pigmented Polymer", it must be good....

The Australian version don't like oiliness, just spray Inox or whatever type of easing / dewatering fluid you use around any openings. They love pitot tubes and i use a length of 1/4" plastic pipe in the pitot. The hole is too small for wasps, so even if you forget to remove it you still have airspeed, don't ask how I know.

If you can limit the wasps access to mud and food this may discourage them from building nests around the hangar and aircraft. In an airport setting this could be difficult to do. Different species of daubers depend on spiders, caterpillars or other small insects to feed their larvae. The nest is comprised of multiple small segments. The female deposits an egg and several insects into each segment. Controlling their access to insects can encourage them to move somewhere else.

Applications of insect sprays containing pyrethrins or synthetic pyrethroids may help control both the wasps and the insects they depend on. Pyrethroids act to disrupt the transmission of signals between nerves. While mammals are less affected by pyrethroids then insects are they are still dangerous to us and are considered a class C carcinogen. Use them carefully. Like many of these substances the damage to your health can take decades to become apparent. They are a less dangerous insecticide developed after the FDA is finally banning many of the horribly dangerous organophosphates that were in use as insecticides after being developed for use as nerve gas!

I have a buddy who has a pulley system in his hangar to hold a dust cover above his aircraft. He can easily pull it up with a single rope to uncover the plane. He does it to keep his planes clean, but a system like that may be helpful to exclude wasps too. Bed nets used for mosquito exclusion are frequently treated with pythrethrin sprays to increase their effectiveness. Spraying the cover would discourage wasps as well.

Good luck. Many aircraft have been brought down by these wasps, even a 757! Birgenair Flight 301

David,
RV6

If you find a trap or attractant that really works then I would suggest to my (non-RV) hangermate three hangers down to use it so the bugs are attracted away from my plane.
I fail to see why I would want to "attract bugs" to bait in the general area of where I am attempting to limit them.
The sticky tape is different (not an attractant) as it appears to just capture dumb flying bugs looking for a resting place. A final resting place at that.

Pat Garboden
Katy, TX
RV9A N942PT

Traps are all well and good but I suggest making sure you have covers for your pitot and fuel vents. I posted something on this two or three years ago and the thread is probably still in the archives somewhere.

Back then I watched in disbelief as the wind blew off a cover from my fuel vent and immediately a yellow-jacket type wasp flew up the vent and buried itself there. Took me an hour to get the vent off, clean it out and reinstall. If I hadn't seen it happen I doubt I would have caught it on pre-flight. It would have been a real shock to see my fuel tank suddenly collapse in flight.

So please be sure to cover your fuel vents -- I used a couple of Van's pitot tube covers for the fuel vents and connected them to my engine cover plugs so I wouldn't forget them during pre-flight.

Chris

tank vent bug guard

It's too dang easy to keep the bugs out of a vent - dunno if this might work in a pitot tube tho...easy enough to test, and remove if it changes anything.

1: cut 1 ea length of .040 safety wire at exactly 1.25". No longer, no shorter
2: fold 1 ea length of safety wire in half, making the U shape at least 3/16" wide
3: insert 1 ea length of safety wire(folded) into the vent opening (cut end 1st) leaving the end of the U flush with the end of the vent

The resulting opening is too small for the critters to get in. Problem solved. I put 'em on every ship that visits my shop.

I do not think this will work in 3/8" vents. Fix covers to this size opening.

Carry on!
Mark

bug zapper

I think every shop should have one of these for the ones that escape all the great ideas posted.
http://www.harborfreight.com/electronic-fly-swatter-40122.html
If nothing else it's fun. Add a few beers and a few more zappers and make it a bug killing party. New D cells really make them zap.

Disclaimer...no flying after the beer and don't whack your airplane.

DavidBurton said:

I have a buddy who has a pulley system in his hangar to hold a dust cover above his aircraft. He can easily pull it up with a single rope to uncover the plane. He does it to keep his planes clean, but a system like that may be helpful to exclude wasps too. Bed nets used for mosquito exclusion are frequently treated with pythrethrin sprays to increase their effectiveness. Spraying the cover would discourage wasps as well.

Good luck. Many aircraft have been brought down by these wasps, even a 757! Birgenair Flight 301

David,
RV6

Click to expand...

I would like to see pictures of a hangar ceiling cover you could just lower down and raise with some kind of pulley. I've heard this before of guys who have done this, but I can't envision it in detail how to make it work right without a frame or something.

Back on topic, I think I like the bug zapper idea the best for flight capable bugs. The bait traps and the fly sticks all have attractants that are going to make the flying beasts want to come into your hangar from afar. The zapper on the other hand, hangs inside a dark hangar, you make it as undetectable to the outside as you can when the doors shut, and it zaps anything drawn to it.

And there's no chemicals...

I block my fuel vents with a zip tie. I use the smaller ones that fit into the vent tubing. Shove it in until it bottoms against the locking end of the zip tie. The small bend in the zip tie offers enough resistance to keep it in place. If you want, you can tie a piece of red flag to the exposed locking end with some safety wire so you don't forget to remove it. Works for me and is as cheap and available as can be.

dang muddaubers

built a home in the fuel vents of my-3, didn't notice it until I was at 800ft, that's when the engine quit! Took off on 09, landed on 23. Both vents are now covered, but for awhile I was taking the vents off and cleaning them out with a wire before each flight. Pucker factor 5.7

Mud Daubers Building Nest

I'm always fighting these guys and their annoying nests.

Check out the video that I recorded. This was just sitting (relaxing) in my back porch for about 1 hour.

pipe cleaner

I use the large size pipe cleaners in bright color in my fuel vents slide them in and they stay keeps bugs out and if you take off with them in they still pass air.
Bob

Here in MS (and, I suspect, in other places), we have multiple problem critters. 'Dirt daubers' of various species build anything from the tunnel-looking structures to 'dirt clod' shaped structures that are sometimes as big as your fist. I had to remove an elevator several years ago after one of these 'fists' came loose & was rolling around inside during a preflight. I had to dunk the entire elevator in a barrel of water to dissolve the nest; no way to get it out of a completed -4 elevator. (The plane is kept in a closed, but not airtight hangar.)

The other threat is what actually looks like a bee; much smaller than a dirt dauber wasp. That's what gets in our pitots & fuel vents.

I freely admit to having almost no memory, so I wanted a memory-independent solution. On my vents, I used aluminum window screen prosealed over the end of the A/N fittings. for the pitot (van's bent tubing), I use the clamp-on flapper that's sold by various aviation vendors. I never forget to remove (or install) either of the fixes. Neither of the above were my original ideas.

In my opinion, flying every day is no defense against these kinds of pests. The pitot/vent builders (the really dangerous ones, in my opinion) can plug a vent in a few hours, at most. I've had a paper wasp nest stay active inside the front axle, and under the rear fender of my tractor, for weeks (perhaps months) before they were killed off. I'm confident of the time frame due to the size of the nest under the fender when I finally noticed it, and actually watching the wasps in the axle. They'd actually follow the tractor around the yard, & work while I was mowing.

FWIW,

Charlie

Safety wire works for round holes

... won't keep the buggers out of ailerons and elevators, but a length of safety wire bent into a sine wave shape and shoved into a fuel vent or pitot tube will block them from entering and can be left in place while flying as the air gets past it easily.

I have had to do this treatment to air tools, tire pressure gauges and compression testers, anything with an air chuck nipple attached, as the little *******s will get into these places even if the tool is kept in a bench drawer. It's a bad feeling to see your differential compression tester packed with mud and bug larvae and realize if you don't get it cleaned out really well, you'll be injecting that **** into your cylinders on the next annual.

Okay, compression testing vs. boroscoping is for another thread, I know...

-Stormy

We don't have a problem with these critters in California.

Unless of course you buy an airplane in Alabama...

Shortly after bringing my -6 home I completed various small tasks, one of which was a flap rigging adjustment. I found a mud dauber nest at least as big as a baseball inside the fuse on the bulkhead forward of where the flap actuator rod penetrates the fuselage. Hmm, better look around. I found its twin on the other side, and one on the wing under each flap. I haven?t seen any others so far.

I?ll be doing the condition inspection this month, we?ll see if I can discover any more in the areas of the airplane I haven?t been into yet.

Doug

At our airport (in SF Bay Area) we get paper wasps (like C210s with gear legs dangling) who are annoying but not too aggressive, yellow jackets that will chase you into the next county, little black bugs shaped like orzo pasta that, for several weeks during summer, attach themselves to every white surface like a plague of locusts, tiny frogs that commit hari-kari on the hanger tracks, and every kind of migratory bird you can imagine in our pattern.

And the occasional mud-daubers drop in too. I have a nest I leave on my hanger door as a reminder.