After mating, females select a site and being digging a burrow. Favorite sites are embankments, under sidewalks and roadsides. Commonly, lawns are chosen in populated areas. Soil or sand is first loosened with the front legs, then scooted out of the hole with her middle and hind legs. Sometimes the female enters the burrow and pushes out soil with her head and front legs.
Females burrow into the soil for approximately ten inches, with a channel of about half an inch.
Oval chambers are excavated at the end of the burrow, large enough to accommodate a few individual cicadas. The female then seeks a cicada in the trees, apparently by vision rather than sound, suggested because the majority of her prey are female cicadas which make no sound. Cicadas are usually captured in flight. Cicadas are paralyzed by the venom of the wasp's sting, and will remain alive during the feeding of the wasp larvae. After stinging the cicada, the female wasp carries it back to her burrow, sometimes a hundred yards away.