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She shows us the old mothers no longer leaving the home but mounting guard at the entrance to the burrows. No harvesting- or pottery-work is possible with these absorbing doorkeeping-functions. Therefore there is no new family, even admitting that the mothers' ovaries are not depleted. I do not know if a similar argument is valid in the case of the Cylindrical Halictus.
In this Eden with its well-caked soil, its warmth and quiet, the little Halictus has multiplied her mole-hills to such a degree that I cannot take a step without crushing some of them. The accident is not serious: the miner, safe underground, will be able to scramble up the crumbling sides of the mine and repair the threshold of the trampled home.
Like mingles with like, without the rendering of any mutual service; and this is enough to summon the Early Halictus to the same way-side, even as the Herring and the Sardine assemble in the same waters. The Halictus opens up another question, connected with one of life's obscurest problems. Let us go back five-and-twenty years. I am living at Orange. My house stands alone among the fields.
Has she any general survivors? As my attention had not yet been directed on this point in the old days, when I had the insect at my door, I have no records to go upon. For all that, I am inclined to think that the portress of the Zebra Halictus is unknown here. The reason of this absence would be the number of workers at the start.
There is something better than the well-preserved order of the entrances. When an Halictus appears, returning from her round of the flowers, we see a sort of trap-door, which closed the house, suddenly fall and give a free passage. As soon as the new arrival has entered, the trap rises back into its place, almost level with the ground, and closes the entrance anew.
The Halictus' nurseries are, as we see, structures that take much time in the making. The insect first digs in the clayey earth a recess with an oval curve to it. It has its mandibles for a pick-axe and its tarsi, armed with tiny claws, for rakes.
Speaking of the Zebra Halictus, I used the words hamlet, village, township; and the expressions were appropriate. Here the term city hardly meets the case. And what reason can we allege for these innumerable clusters? I can see but one: the charm of living together, which is the origin of society.
The Halictus parallelus excavates cells almost exactly like those of Andrena; but since the bee is smaller, the holes are smaller, though as deep. Mr. Emerton found one nest in a path a foot in depth. Another nest, discovered September 9th, was about six inches deep. The cells are in form like those of Andrena, and like them, are glazed within.
The Halictus judging, at least, by her tranquillity takes no notice of the parasite lying in wait for her; the parasite, on the other hand, displays no fear of being punished for her audacity. She remains imperturbable, she, the dwarf, in the presence of the colossus who could crush her with one blow.
The air is balmy; the smiling lawns are gay with a thousand little flowers, dandelions, rock-roses, tansies and daisies, among which the harvesting Bee rolls gleefully, covering herself with pollen. With her crop full of honey and the brushes of her legs befloured, the Halictus returns to her village.
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