I was cleaning out some phragmites tubes which had not been looked after from last year in a friend’s yard and I assumed that since many of the tubes had penetrated mud plugs (usually a sign of parasitic wasps) then they would be empty. To my surprise, in this one tube I had interrupted a current viable set of eggs deposited on the pollen, and since it was a rainy day, the female was still in the end of the tube. I had not seen the egg at such an early stage before , so i took advantage of the opportunity having ruined this tube, to at least get some photos. I did salvage the few compartments at the end of the tube which hadn’t opened yet, but when a tube is moved this early, there is always a risk of the eggs becoming detached from the food source.
