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Updated: June 20, 2025
It mixes a few scrapings of perforated pith with the green paste. The Chalicodoma works in broad daylight, on a tile, on a pebble, on a branch in the hedge; none of her trade-practises is kept a secret from the observer's curiosity. The Osmia loves mystery. She wants a dark retreat, hidden from the eye.
In his time, everything had yet to be done; and the harvest was so great that the illustrious harvester went straight to what was most urgent, the gathering of the crop, and left his successors to examine the grain and the ear in detail. Nevertheless, in connection with the Chalicodoma of the Walls, he mentions an experiment made by his friend, Duhamel.
But let us examine the shapeless mass more closely and we shall perceive the number of chambers composing the habitation with the funnelled mouths, each quite distinct and each furnished with its gravel stopper set in the cement. The Chalicodoma of the Walls employs the same building methods as Eumenes Amedei: in the courses of cement she fixes, on the outside, small stones of minor bulk.
Now Eumenes Amedei requires a first-class cement, even better than that of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, for the work, when finished, does not receive the thick covering wherewith the Mason-bee protects her cluster of cells. And therefore the cupola-builder, as often as she can, uses the highway as her stone-pit. With the mortar, flints are needed.
Among other ingenious experiments to show the supposed difference between instinctive and reflective acts, Fabre brings forward the following : The Chalicodoma, a hymenopterous relative of the Bees, constructs nests composed of cells formed of mud agglutinated with saliva. The cell once constructed, the insect begins to fill it with honey before laying an egg there.
These incidents are sufficient to show why I hesitate to give the name of memory to the singular faculty that brings the insect back to her nest with such unerring precision and yet does not allow her to distinguish her work from some one else's, however great the difference may be. We will now experiment with Chalicodoma muraria from another psychological point of view.
When confronted with tubes too small to receive all her family, the Osmia is in the same plight as the Mason-bee in the presence of an old nest. She thereupon acts exactly as the Chalicodoma does. She breaks up her laying, divides it into series as short as the room at her disposal demands; and each series begins with females and ends with males.
The parasite has wiped out half the colony. To complete the disaster, it is not unusual for the grub-eaters, the Leucopsis and her rival, the pygmy Chalcis, to have decimated the other half. I say nothing of Anthrax sinuata, whom I sometimes see coming from the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds; her larva preys on the Three-horned Osmia, the Mason-bee's visitor.
There are some whence the perfect insect was never able to issue: the Chalicodoma wore herself out in trying to pierce the ceiling of her chamber; her strength failed her and she perished in the attempt. "The Mason-bees": chapter 11.
Instead of rest, hard work; instead of a flourishing family, a meagre progeny. To generalities, which are necessarily vague, we will add some precise facts. When the Chalicodoma has finished building her dome of cells upon her pebble, the parasite appears, makes a long inspection of the outside of the home and proposes, puny as she is, to introduce her eggs into this cement fortress.
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