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Updated: June 22, 2025
If, in order to see the Osmia's nest as a whole, we split a reed lengthwise, taking care not to disturb its contents; or, better still, if we select for examination the string of cells built in a glass tube, we are forthwith struck by one detail, namely, the uneven distances between the partitions, which are placed almost at right angles to the axis of the cylinder.
Inadvertently straying to the Osmia's table, the larva has no excuse for turning up its nose; it does not leave part of the food to go bad; it eats up the lot without having had enough. This famine-stricken refectory can give us nothing but an abortion.
At any rate, I perceive in her a tendency to deviate as little as possible from the order which safeguards the emergence of the two sexes. This tendency is demonstrated by her repugnance to colonizing my narrow tubes with long series of males. However, so far as we are concerned, it does not matter much what passes at such times in the Osmia's little brain.
Sometimes at the moment of removing the first layer, sometimes at a depth of eighteen inches, we shall find the Osmia's Snail-shell and, much more rarely, the Resin-bee's. Above all, patience! The job is none of the most fruitful; nor is it exactly an agreeable one.
The Scoliae feed their grubs on prey; so do the Mutillae. The Osmia's parasite, therefore, if it really derives from a transformed ancestor, is descended from a flesh-eater, though it is now an eater of honey. The Wolf does more than become a Sheep: he turns himself into a sweet-tooth. 'You will never get an apple-tree out of an acorn, Franklin tells us, with that homely common-sense of his.
On the free end of the Osmia's egg, another egg is fixed; an egg quite different in shape, white and transparent like the first, but much smaller and narrower, blunt at one end and tapering into a rather sharp point at the other. It is two millimetres long by half a millimetre wide. It opens before the Osmia's egg.
The egg is then laid at full length on the surface, without any particular arrangement, thus compelling the new-born grub to take its first mouthfuls at random. This has no drawback, as the food is of the same quality throughout. But, with the Osmia's provisions dry powder on the edges, jam in the centre the grub would be in danger if its first meal were not regulated in advance.
There is just one thing that might possibly arouse a suspicion of the cause of this irregularity in the Three-pronged Osmia's laying. If I open a bramble-stump in the winter to examine the Osmia's nest, I find it impossible, in the vast majority of cases, to distinguish positively between a female and a male cocoon: the difference in size is so small.
Here is an example: in July, I split some bramble-stems in which Osmia tridentata has built her nests. In the long series of cells, the lower already hold the Osmia's cocoons, while the upper contain the larva which has nearly finished consuming its provisions and the topmost show the victuals untouched, with the Osmia's egg upon them.
On opening a certain number of these cocoons, we end by discovering some which, in place of the Osmia's larva, contain each a curiously shaped nymph. These nymphs, at the least shock received by their dwelling, indulge in extravagant movements, lashing the walls with their abdomen till the whole house shakes and dances.
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