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Total: seventeen, out of forty-nine. I resolved upon a fourth experiment, on the 14th of May. The weather is glorious, with a light northerly breeze. I take twenty Mason-bees, marked in pink, at eight o'clock in the morning. Rotations at the start, after a preliminary backing in a direction opposite to that which I intend to take; two rotations on the road; a fourth on arriving.
With all these things to take into consideration, I cannot expect my dot on the Bee's thorax to last any length of time. By day, the constant brushing and the rubbing against the partitions of the galleries soon wipe it off; at night, things are worse still, in the narrow sleeping-room where the Mason-bees take refuge by the hundred.
My Mason-bees head for the south as though some compass told them which way the wind was blowing. I am back at twelve o'clock. None of the strays is at the nest; but, a few minutes later, I catch two. At two o'clock, the number has increased to nine. But now the sky clouds over, the wind freshens and the storm is approaching. We can no longer rely on any further arrivals.
Why, yes: a free lodging suits her just as much as it does the various Mason-bees. She knows as well as they the economic advantages of an old nest that is still in good condition: she settles down, as far as possible, in her predecessors' galleries, after freshening up the sides with a superficial scraping. And she does better still.
The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. viii.; and Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim. The Mason-wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. vi. and x.
There must be something more. And I was right: that arrangement in series is only a tiny fraction of the reality, which is remarkable in a very different way. This is what I am going to prove by experiment. I will begin with the Mason-bee of the Pebbles. Cf. "The Mason-bees": passim.
All this refuse has to disappear and that quickly, lest afterwards the larva should find coarse fare under its delicate mandibles. Therefore the Mason-bees must be able to cleanse the cell of any foreign body. And, in point of fact, they are well able to do so. I place on the surface of the honey five or six bits of straw a millimetre in length.
At the actual moment of departure, there is nothing definite about the direction taken, none of that straight flight to the nest which the Cerceris-wasps once showed me in similar circumstances. As soon as they are liberated, the Mason-bees flee as though scared, some in one direction, some in exactly the opposite direction.
Besides the common honeybee there are many others here, fine, burly, mossy fellows, such as were nourished on the mountains many a flowery century before the advent of the domestic species bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
Nor is it sight that guides my Mason-bees, especially when they are let loose in the thick of a wood. Their low flight, eight or nine feet above the ground, does not allow them to take a panoramic view nor to gather the lie of the land. What need have they of topography?
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