I just got back from a long visit to Mickey or I'd have jumped in to bash BSFL sooner. BASH, I say! Kim has a few facts wrong, 'tis true, but in the main I must agree BSFL are the bain of my compost pile. I just can't believe people don't uniformly hate the buggers for their speedy destruction of a healthy compost pile. Why do I hate them, you ask? Is it because I discovered 1000+ under my wool living room rug the summer after my Christmas puppy peed everywhere? Maybe that's a factor, but By Gum I'm an open minded composter. I hate them because they quickly liquify every bit of green material in a pile, without digesting the brown even a tiny bit. My lovely, airy, hot, earthy pile, teaming with beneficial bacteria quickly sinks down to cold solid anaerobic barnyard stinking goo. I struggle to turn it every day to try and get air around, because the grasses and stems are all fully intact stringy fork clogging SOB's. I spread it all out six inches thick for days. I pile it back up. I go to Disney for eight days. I come back again to cold solid anaerobic barnyard stinking goo again. All the larvae are gone, taking exactly their weight of nitrogen with them, far away from my garden. But not far enough away for me. I have tried dry piles, turning every three days to incorporate laid eggs, brown heavy piles, running piles at 150 degrees, all to no avail. If I've got a pile moist and green enough to heat, it WILL have BSFL in it by mid June and through to the end of July. I hate them. On the bright side, on the way home I picked up several baskets of really divine tree ripe peaches from Lane orchards in GA and had a lovely day walking around the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I listened attentively to a sweet volunteer lady explain exactly the organic regimen they use to grow the rose garden. She showed me her display of baking soda, Epsom salt, and alfalfa pellets and grinned the sweetest, elderly lady rose enthusiast grin I guess I've ever seen. I spared her my greensand lecture, since I wasn't volunteering and she was.

So I got a response. Turns out everything is ok. Read the response from the dept of ag below: I sent one our guys by your house the other day and they did an inspection of your tree, but did not find anything of concern. Based on the size of the tree, he determined that one of our traps was probably not necessary. We did find a larger tree around the block from you and one will be going in there soon. We did learn a little more from your pictures though. Based on the size of a piece of fruit collected off of the ground at your residence, our entomologist was able to come up with an approximate size of the larva from your photographs and he believes that the images you took are of fly larvae in the Ulidiiae (formerly Otitidae) family. A common fly larvae found on damaged or decaying fruit. We also routinely find these flies in our traps throughout Arizona. Here is a link with more images: http://www.padil.gov.au/maf-border/Pest/Main/140616/33211 The other images that you sent me the other day are of another one of our natives called the Smoketree Sharpshooter (Homalodisca liturata). More images: http://bugguide.net/node/view/68198 This insect is often confused with the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata or Homalodisca vitripennis) which is considered invasive in Arizona but occurs frequently in southern California. http://bugguide.net/node/view/825013 You can readily tell the difference between these two by looking at the head. There are distinct yellow colored lines on a Smoketree Sharpshooter and dots on a Glassy Winged Sharpshooter (GWSS). GWSS is generally larger also.

Posting an update to say things are progressing well. The east nest remains inactive following the ~4 gallons of boiling water being poured into it. The south nest activity has decrease greatly. The inverted clear bowl has killed most of the grass under it but has taken out a good number of wasps as well. I only have decent visibility of one "side" of the bowl but there are approximately 30 wasp bodies near it. There was one wasp crawling around inside there today so I'm not ready to remove it yet. While performing yard word yesterday I didn't see a single wasp enter or leave the area through the air. So far, here are my opinions of the non-chemical, non-explosive yellow-jacket wasp underground nest elimination methods: shop-vac w/ soapy water inside: long and/or multiple applications may be required for effectiveness soap and water: multiple applications resulted in limited success. four gallons of boiling water: one application resulted in 100% success which continued over 1 week after application. significant damage to grass in application area. note shop-vac and soap/water methods had been attempted first. inverted glass bowl: four days after application the effectiveness looks promising. the only activity present after day 1 has been activity inside the bowl.

They appear to be the empty shells of moth pupae. The Sphingidae family of moths, in particular, make pupak cases like that but there are others, too.