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F. Smith informs me that throughout nearly the whole of this large group, the males, in accordance with the general rule, are smaller than the females, and emerge about a week before them; but amongst the Bees, the males of Apis mellifica, Anthidium manicatum, and Anthophora acervorum, and amongst the Fossores, the males of the Methoca ichneumonides, are larger than the females.
Grappled now to the female bee, the grub of the Sitaris "conceals itself, and allows itself to be carried by her" to the end of the gallery in which she is now contriving her cradle, "watches the precise moment when the egg is laid, installs itself upon it, and allows itself to fall therewith upon the surface of the honey, in order to substitute itself for the future offspring of the Anthophora, and possess itself of house and victuals."
The touch of the honey is as fatal to them as to the young Sitares. Searches made at various periods in the nests of the Hairy-footed Anthophora had taught me some years earlier that Meloe cicatricosus, like the Sitares, is a parasite of that Bee; indeed I had at different times discovered adult Meloes, dead and shrivelled, in the Bee's cells.
It is impossible to decide by experiment to which of these two periods we must ascribe the introduction of the Sitares into the cell; for, however peaceable the Anthophora may be, it is evident that we cannot hope to witness what happens in the cell at the moment when she is laying an egg or at the moment when she is making the lid.
She had occupied but a small number of cells, because the others were not free, being inhabited by the Anthophora. The cells in question were divided into three storeys by partitions of green mortar; the lower storey was occupied by a female, the two others by males, with smaller cocoons. I came to an even more remarkable example.
During the course of the year I learnt from Léon Dufour, to whom I had spoken of the Sitares, that the tiny creature which he had found on the Andrenæ and described under the generic name of Triungulinus, was recognized later by Newport as the larva of a Meloe, or Oil-beetle. Now it so happened that I had found a few Oil-beetles in the cells of the same Anthophora that nourishes the Sitares.
I examined them conscientiously in the quiet of my study. I found the Osmia's cocoons arranged in short series, in very irregular passages, the original work of which is due to the Anthophora.
Does the female go from cell to cell, confiding an egg to the succulent flanks of each larva, whether this larva belong to the Anthophora or to a parasite of hers, as the mysterious shell whence the Sitaris emerges would incline one to believe? This method of laying the eggs, one at a time in each cell, would appear to be essential, if we are to explain the facts already ascertained.
It is most often during the months of August and September, those happy months of the summer holidays, that I have visited the banks inhabited by the Anthophora. At this period all is silent near the nests; the work has long been completed; and numbers of Spiders' webs line the crevices or plunge their silken tubes into the Bee's corridors.
We shall find tendencies, impulses, preferences, efforts, intentions, "Machiavellic ruses and unheard-of stratagems." Certain miserable black mites, living specks, the larvae of a beetle, one of the Meloidae, the Sitaris, are parasites of the solitary bee, the Anthophora.
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