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Updated: June 22, 2025
Long and narrow cylinders are by no means to the Osmia's taste, not because of their narrowness but because of their length. Remember that for each load of honey brought the worker is obliged to move backwards twice. She enters, head first, to begin by disgorging the honey-syrup from her crop.
He, however, is careful not to let go; he waits for the strife overhead to calm down; and, when the supernumeraries realize that they are wasting their time and throw up the game, the couple fly away far from the turbulent rivals. This is all that I have been able to gather about the Osmia's nuptials.
Long and narrow cylinders are by no means to the Osmia's taste, not because of their narrowness but because of their length. Observe that for each load of honey brought the worker is obliged to move backwards twice. She enters, head first, to begin by disgorging the honey-syrup from her crop.
Among the number are the different inhabitants of the bramble-stumps, notably the Three-pronged Osmiae, who form an excellent subject for observation, partly because they are of imposing size bigger than any other bramble-dwellers in my neighbourhood partly because they are so plentiful. Let us briefly recall the Osmia's habits.
My studies will, by preference, bear upon the Three-pronged Osmia, who lends herself more readily to laboratory experiments, both because she is stronger and because the same stalk will contain a goodly number of her cells. The first fact to be ascertained is the order of hatching. I take a glass tube, closed at one end, open at the other and of a diameter similar to that of the Osmia's tunnel.
They form a sort of coarse stucco, on the more or less smooth cupola of the Chalicodoma; and this unevenness, as well as the green colouring of its mortar of masticated leaves, at once betrays the Osmia's nest.
It may happen that the Osmia's patience is in vain and that the barricade that blocks the way never disappears at all. Sometimes, the egg in a cell does not mature; and the unconsumed provisions dry up and become a compact, sticky, mildewed plug, through which the occupants of the floors below could never clear themselves a passage.
I have been studying the bramble-dwellers for seven or eight years and I could not say how many strings of cocoons have passed through my hands. During a recent winter, in view particularly of the distribution of the sexes, I collected some forty of this Osmia's nests, transferred their contents into glass tubes and made a careful summary of the sexes. I give some of my results.
The village of our childhood is always a cherished spot, never to be effaced from our recollection. The Osmia's life endures for a month; and she acquires a lasting remembrance of her hamlet in a couple of days. 'Twas there that she was born; 'twas there that she loved; 'tis there that she will return. Dulces reminiscitur Argos. At last each has made her choice.
Now, lying at full length on the surface of the honey, it no longer shifts its position; but the undulations of the digestive canal betray its greedy absorption of the Osmia's store of food. The provisions are finished in a fortnight and the cocoon is woven.
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