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The work of construction begins; and my expectations are fulfilled far beyond my wishes. The Osmiae build nests in all the retreats which I have placed at their disposal. The glass tubes, which I cover with a sheet of paper to produce the shade and mystery favourable to concentrated toil, do wonderfully well. All, from first to last, are occupied.
I shall return to the subject after discussing the Osmiae, who are very weighty witnesses in this grave affair. "Bramble-bees and Others": chapters 3 to 5. To meet among the Wasps, those eager lovers of flowers, a species that goes hunting more or less on its own account is certainly a notable event.
If the Osmiae have their heads pointing upwards, they attack the partition above them, as happens under normal conditions; if their heads point downwards, they turn round in their cells and set to work as usual. In short, the general outward trend is towards the top, in whatever position the cocoon be placed.
Like the great majority of the Osmiae, the Megachiles do not understand the art of making themselves a home straight away: they want a borrowed lodging, which may vary considerably in character. For the sake of clearness, let us cease generalizing and direct our attention to a definite species. Her customary dwelling is the tunnel of an Earth-worm opening on some clay bank.
The more I thought about this curious question, the more probable it appeared to me that the irregular series of the Three-pronged Osmia and the regular series of the other Osmiae, of the Chalicodomae and of the Bees in general were all traceable to a common law. It seemed to me that the arrangement in a succession first of females and then of males did not account for everything.
The two other Osmiae, with their great disparity in size between the two sexes, have to be careful about the twofold consideration of board and lodging. And that, I think, is why they begin with spacious cells and generous rations for the homes of the females and end with narrow, scantily-provisioned cells, the homes of the males.
Lastly, the apparatus is hung up perpendicularly, with the cocoons' heads up. We have now only to wait. None of the Osmiae can get out in the usual manner, because each of them is confined between two partitions coated with sealing-wax.
And the layings in these apparatus do not always belong to late summer or even to the intermediate period: a few small tubes contain the earliest eggs of the Osmiae. A couple of Osmiae, more forward than the others, set to work on the 23rd of April. Both of them started their laying by placing males in the narrow tubes.
Others, the Osmiae in particular, accept a compromise and begin to relieve the digestive tract when a suitable space has been made in the cell through the gradual disappearance of the victuals. Others again more hurried these find means of obeying the common law pretty early by engaging in stercoral manufactures. By a stroke of genius, they make the unpleasant obstruction into building-bricks.
I will describe later how I managed to make a whole swarm of these Osmiae build their nests on the table in my study, in glass tubes that enabled me to see the inmost secrets of the work of the Bee. "Bramble-bees and Others", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 1 to 7.
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