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Updated: June 1, 2025
About the middle of July, when the animation of the colony is at its height, two sets of Halicti are easily distinguishable: the young mothers and the old. The former, much more numerous, brisk of movement and smartly arrayed, come and go unceasingly from the burrows to the fields and from the fields to the burrows. The latter, faded and dispirited, wander idly from hole to hole.
No such indiscretion is suffered among the Halicti. Let each keep to her own place and to herself and perfect peace will reign in this new-formed society, made up of neighbours and not of fellow-workers. Operations begin in April, most unobtrusively, the only sign of the underground works being the little mounds of fresh earth. There is no animation in the building-yards.
Seeking for a home wherein to stack her robinia-leaf honey-pots, she often makes a flying inspection of my colonies of Halicti. A burrow seems to take her fancy; but, before she sets foot on earth, her buzzing is noticed by the sentry, who suddenly darts out and makes a few gestures on the threshold of her door. That is all. The Leaf-cutter has understood. She moves on.
We need but watch their peaceful waiting, their tranquil dives, to recognize that this indeed is a common passage to which each has as much right as another. When the soil is exploited for the first time and the shaft sunk slowly from the outside to the inside, do several Cylindrical Halicti, one relieving the other, take part in the work by which they will afterwards profit equally?
The dwelling dug by the solitary Bee in early spring remains, when summer comes, the joint inheritance of the members of the family. There are ten cells, or thereabouts, underground. Now from these cells there have issued none but females. This is the rule among the three species of Halicti that concern us now and probably also among many others, if not all. They have two generations in each year.
The Halicti employ a different method. The compartments, each with its round loaf and its egg the tenant and his provisions are not closed up. As they all open into the common passage of the burrow, the mother is able, without leaving her other occupations, to inspect them daily and enquire tenderly into the progress of her family.
When the victualling is finished, when the Halicti no longer sally forth on harvesting intent nor return all befloured with their spoils, the old Bee is still at her post, vigilant as ever. The final preparations for the brood are made below; the cells are closed. The door will be kept until everything is finished. Then grandmother and mothers leave the house.
To construct cells and to amass victuals are occupations entirely foreign to their nature. This rule seems to have no exceptions; and the Halicti conform to it like the rest. It is therefore only to be expected that we should see no males shooting the underground rubbish outside the galleries. That is not their business.
It is the distinctive mark, the emblem of the family. Three Halicti will appear before you in this biographical fragment. Two of them are my neighbours, my familiars, who rarely fail to settle each year in the best parts of the enclosure. They occupied the ground before I did; and I should not dream of evicting them, persuaded as I am that they will well repay my indulgence.
At this period, a little before July, if my spade unearth the cells of any one of my three Halicti, the result is always females, nothing but females, with exceedingly rare exceptions. True, it may be said that the second progeny is due to the mothers who knew the males in autumn and who would be able to nidify twice a year. The suggestion is not admissible. The Zebra Halictus confirms what I say.
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