Potter Wasps on the Canadian Fleabane

The other day I got out of the car and noticed that there was half a dozen potter wasps going crazy for the Canadian Fleabane Conyza canadensis (Fr. la Vergerette du Canada) in the front courtyard. It doesn't have very eyecatching flowers and it can definitely be called a weed here, but it must be packed with nectar that these distinctive wasps were feasting on.

Potter wasps Eumenes sp (Fr. les guêpes potières) are notoriously difficult to identify to species level, but luckily the Spanish social wasp specialist Leopoldo Castro was able to look at my photos in Facebook and offer his opinion. He says my photos are almost certainly of E. coronatus. We think there was a second species present too, because some of my photos show an individual with an almost entirely yellow posterior half of the abdomen. The photos were all taken with my phone, so most of them are quite blurry.

Potter wasps make charming little mud vases attached to twigs on bushes, which they lay an egg in and stock with a paralysed caterpillar which will become food for the larva once it hatches.