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Updated: June 5, 2025
To make use of them, it will be enough for the Halictus to polish up the stucco with her tongue. Well, which of the survivors, all equally entitled to the succession, will inherit the house? There are six of them, seven, or more, according to the chances of mortality. To whose share will the maternal dwelling fall? There is no quarrel between the interested parties.
I am privileged at times to witness a fight between two grandmothers. When the tramp in quest of employment appears outside the door, the lawful occupant does not move from her post, does not withdraw into the passage, as she would before an Halictus returning from the fields. Far from making way, she threatens the intruder with her feet and mandibles.
Seated on a low chair in the sun, with my back bent and my arms upon my knees, I watch, without moving, until dinner-time. What attracts me is a parasite, a trumpery Gnat, the bold despoiler of the Halictus. Has the jade a name? I trust so, without, however, caring to waste my time in enquiries that can have no interest for the reader.
In April, when the Zebra Halictus, in search of a good place for her burrows, roams up and down the garden paths with her oscillating flight, the parasite, on its side, hastens to hatch. Oh, the precise and terrible agreement between those two calendars, the calendar of the persecutor and the persecuted!
Should she insist, the watcher leaves her sentry-box, flings herself upon the saucy jade, buffets her and drives her away. The moment the punishment has been administered, she returns to her post. Those of the Zebra Halictus suit her very well, when the terrible Gnat has left them vacant for lack of heirs.
We will cut short these details concerning the cells, which the Zebra Halictus has already shown us in greater perfection, leave the home to itself and come to the most striking feature in the life-history of the Halicti. The Cylindrical Halictus is at work in the first days of May. It is a rule among the Hymenoptera for the males never to take part in the fatiguing work of nest-building.
The females of the Cylindrical Halictus whom I unearth from November onwards are evidently fecundated, as is proved by the assiduity of the males during the preceding two months and most positively confirmed by the couples discovered in the course of my excavations.
Meanwhile their more lowly relatives, the Andrena and Halictus bees, are engaged in tunnelling the side of some sunny bank or path, running long galleries underground, sometimes for a foot or more, at the farthest end of which are to be found, in summer, little earthen urn-like cells, in which the grubs live upon the pollen stored up for them in little balls of the size of a pea.
If your capture be an Halictus, there will be here a smooth and shiny line, a narrow groove along which the sting slides up and down when the insect is on the defensive. This slide for the unsheathed weapon denotes some member of the Halictus tribe, without distinction of size or colour. No elsewhere, in the sting-bearing order, is this original sort of groove in use.
In the autumn, the females of the Cylindrical Halictus leave their burrows seldom or not at all. Those who do go out invariably come back after a brief halt upon the flowers. All pass the winter in the natal cells. On the other hand, those of the Zebra Halictus move their quarters, meet the males outside and do not return to the burrows, which my autumn excavations always find deserted.
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