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On the natural site, in the cells of the Anthophora, this apparent anomaly never occurs, because the secondary larva, when on the point of transformation into the pseudochrysalis, is always careful to place its head uppermost, according as the axis of the cell more or less nearly approaches the vertical.
The Anthophora parietina is in this group; it is a small bee which lives in liberty in our climate. As its name indicates, it prefers to frequent the walls of old buildings and finds a refuge in the interstices, hollowing out the mortar half disintegrated by time. The entrance to the dwelling is protected by a tube curved towards the bottom, and making an external prominence.
In the first place, this microscopic creature must be provided with talons, or how could it adhere to the fleece of the Anthophora, on which it must live as parasite for a certain length of time? Then again, it must transfer itself from the male to the female bee in the course of its travels abroad, or its destiny would be cut short.
Not so, for the Meloes remain motionless on insect corpses that have dried up completely, on dead Anthophoræ taken from cells at least a year old. I have seen them keep absolutely quiet on fragments of an Anthophora on a thorax long since nibbled and emptied by the Mites.
In hunting for cells provisioned with honey I thus lose a good part of the month of May; however, I end by finding some which are newly sealed and which belong to the right Anthophora. I open these cells with the feverish impatience of a sorely-tried longing. All goes well: they are half-full of fluid, dark, nauseating honey, with the Bee's lately-hatched larva floating on the surface.
Thus enclosed with the egg of the Anthophora and its provision of honey, the larva has no other rival to fear, and may alone utilise the whole store. This parasitism has to such an extent become a habit with the species, that the larva's organisation has become modified by it. At the moment when it falls into the cell it cannot feed on honey.
And so, all through the winter, I collect Osmia-cocoons picked up in the nests of the Mason-bee of the Sheds; I go to Carpentras to glean a more plentiful supply in the nests of the Anthophora. I spread out my stock in a large open box on a table which receives a bright diffused light but not the direct rays of the sun. The table stands between two windows facing south and overlooking the garden.
We know that the Three-horned Osmia prefers to haunt the habitations of the Bees who nidify in populous colonies, such as the Mason-bee of the Sheds and the Hairy-footed Anthophora, in whose nests I have noted similar facts. Thus the sex of the egg is optional.
The males of the Osmia make their appearance even before those of the Anthophora and at so early a season that the young Sitaris-larvæ are perhaps not yet aroused by the instinctive impulse which urges them to activity.
This was the reason of the complete failure both of my attempts and of Newport's to rear the young Meloe-larvæ. Instead of offering them honey, or larvæ, or nymphs, we should have placed them on the eggs recently laid by the Anthophora.
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