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She is well-advised to start work early and to be on neighbourly terms with the Osmia when the latter is building; in fact, we shall soon see the terrible dangers to which that same proximity exposes her dilatory rival in resin-work, Anthidium bellicosum. The shell adopted in the great majority of cases is that of the Common Snail, Helix aspersa.
A splendid tool, as you say, for gathering the viscous pellet; quite as efficacious in its kind of work as is the rake of the toothed mandibles for gathering cotton. Here certainly is a creature potently-gifted, even though it be for a poor little task, the scooping up of two or three drops of glue. Things are not quite so satisfactory with the second Resin-bee of the Snail-shells, A. bellicosum.
If attempts at usurpation were to be made, the owner of the Snail-shell would know how to enforce her rights as the first occupant. For the summer Resin-bee, A. bellicosum, the conditions are very different. At the moment when the Osmia is building, she is still in the larval, or at most in the nymphal stage.
Two Anthidia of my district, A. septemdentatum, LATR., and A. bellicosum, LEP., adopt as the home of their offspring the empty shells of different snails: Helix aspersa, H. algira, H. nemoralis, H. caespitum. The first-named, the Common Snail, is the most often used, under the stone-heaps and in the crevices of old walls. Both Anthidia colonize only the second whorl of the spiral.
I have obtained the Burnt Zonitis, in the first place, from the cotton pouches of Anthidium scapulare, who, like the Three-toothed Osmia, makes her nests in the brambles; in the second place, from the wallets of Megachile sericans, made with little round disks of the leaves of the common acacia; in the third place, from the cells which Anthidium bellicosum builds with partitions of resin in the shell of a dead Snail.
The second Resin-bee that inhabits shells, Anthidium bellicosum, hatches in July and works during the fierce heat of August. Her architecture differs in no wise from that of her kinswoman of the springtime, so much so that, when we find a tenanted Snail-shell in a hole in the wall or under the stones, it is impossible to decide to which of the two species the nest belongs.
They are the following: Anthidium septemdentatum, LATR., A. bellicosum, LEP., A. quadrilobum, LEP., and A. Latreillii, LEP. The first two make their nests in deserted Snail-shells; the other two shelter their groups of cells sometimes in the ground, sometimes under a large stone. We will first discuss the inhabitants of the Snail-shell.
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