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Updated: June 6, 2025
Starting from Orange and crossing the Aygues, a torrent whose muddy waters are lost in the Rhône, but whose bed is dried by the July and August suns, leaving only a desert of pebbles, where the Mason-bee builds her pretty turrets of rock-work, we come presently to the Sérignaise country; an arid, stony tract, planted with vines and olives, coloured a rusty red, or touched here and there with almost a hue of blood; and here and there a grove of cypress makes a sombre blot.
More discerning than I in her estimate of what was strictly necessary, better-versed in the economy of space, the Osmia had found a way of lodging two females where I had only seen room for one female and a male. This experiment speaks volumes. When confronted with tubes too small to receive all her family, she is in the same plight as the Mason-bee in the presence of an old nest.
While this point escapes me, another of higher interest appears most plainly; and that is the large amount of resinous material used in a single nest, especially in that of Anthidium quadrilobum, in which I have counted as many as twelve cells. The nest of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles is hardly more massive.
Failing anything better, she may establish herself in the dilapidated dome of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles. The Manicate Anthidium shares her tastes. I have surprised the Girdled Anthidium cohabiting with a Bembex-wasp. The two occupants of the cave dug in the sand, the owner and the stranger, were living in peace, both intent upon their business.
A Mason-bee has finished the initial layer of the covering of the cell. She has gone in search of a second pellet of mortar wherewith to strengthen her work. In her absence, I prick the lid with a needle and widen the hole thus made, until it is half the size of the opening. The insect returns and repairs the damage.
These cavities are formed, as in the old nests of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles, of the cell properly so-called and of the exit-way which the perfect insect cut through the outer coating at the time of its deliverance.
Leave the Mason-bee to her own devices, in the spot that suits her; allow the work of many generations to accumulate; and, one fine day, the roof will break down under the extra burden. Let the nests grow old; let them fall to pieces when the damp gets into them; and you will have chunks tumbling on your head big enough to crack your skull. There you see the work of a very little-known insect.
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.
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.
As the Mason-bee of the Walls always works by herself on the pebble which she has chosen and even shows herself very jealous of her site when her neighbours alight upon it, the number of cells set back to back upon one pebble is not large, usually varying between six and ten. Do some eight grubs represent the Bee's whole family?
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