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Updated: September 2, 2025
By watching the insect when busy at its harvesting, or else by examining its manufactured flock under the microscope, I was able to learn, not without a great expenditure of time and patience, that the different Anthidia of my neighbourhood have recourse without distinction to any cottony plant.
But the grey caterpillar, sacrificed one day, may be succeeded on another day by a green, yellow or striped caterpillar. There you have discernment, which is quite capable of recognizing the regulation prey under very diverse garbs. The Megachiles build their honey-jars with disks cut out of leaves; certain Anthidia make felted cotton wallets; others fashion pots out of resin.
That she should bore through the cocoons of the Stelis, a parasite of the mason bee, does not surprise me at all: I know how indifferent my bold visitor is to the nature of the victuals destined for her family. I have noticed her presence in the homes of bees differing greatly in size and habits: Anthophorae, Osmiae, Chalicodomae, Anthidia.
It is skimpy in the extreme, but at any rate it is something. With the urinary broth of which its intestine is unable to get rid, the larva has discovered a means of making itself look a little smart. The Anthidia have shown us how, in their cotton-wool wallets, they manufacture a sort of jewellery with their ordure. The robe studded with grains of alabaster is a no less ingenious invention.
The end containing the head finishes with a short conical nipple, an apex, pierced by a narrow shaft that establishes a communication between the inside and the out. This architectural feature is common to all the Anthidia, to the resin-workers who will occupy our attention presently, as well as to the cotton-workers. It is found nowhere outside the Anthidium group.
In larval diet, in shape, in habits, they form two dissimilar groups, very far removed one from the other. The Anthidia feed their offspring on honey-bread; the Odyneri feed it on live prey.
All the Bees died in the shaft, some turned upwards, others downwards. On the other hand, three stems occupied by Anthidia discharged their population safe and sound. The outgoing was effected at the bottom, from first to last, without the least impediment. Must we take it that the two sorts of Bees are not equally sensitive to the influences of gravity?
There are of course some exceptions, though not many; and I am far from denying them. I will mention certain Anthidia where the male is the larger of the two. Nevertheless, in the great majority of cases the female has the advantage. And this is as it should be.
*The humble-bees, for instance, have the Psithyri as parasites, while the Stelites live on the Anthidia. "As regards the frequent identity of the parasite with its victim," M. J. Perez very justly remarks in his book "The Bees," "one must necessarily admit that the two genera are only different forms of the same type, and are united to each other by the closest affinity.
I see Anthidia laboriously provide numerous bales of cotton to stop galleries wherein never an egg was laid; I see Mason-bees build and then religiously close cells that will remain unvictualled and uncolonized. The long and useless barricades then belong to the last hours of the Megachile's life, when the eggs are all laid; the mother, whose ovaries are exhausted, persists in building.
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