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Updated: June 15, 2025
My notes record that a Philanthus sacrificed six bees in succession before my eyes, and emptied them all of honey in the approved manner. The killing came to an end not because the glutton was satiated, but because my functions as provider were becoming troublesome; the dry month of August leaves but few insects in the flowerless garden. Six bees emptied of their honey what a gluttonous meal!
Here it is that the sting will be inserted; and here it is inserted in a breach in the armour no larger than a pin's head. Suppress a single link of this closely knit chain, and the Philanthus reared upon the flesh of bees becomes an impossibility. That honey is fatal to larvæ is a fact pregnant with consequences. Various predatory insects feed their young with honey-makers.
For centuries and centuries Philanthus has stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust.
There is no uncertainty here as to the result, there is no long wait: the moment when she catches sight of the prey in an attitude favourable to her designs, the bandit rushes forward and kills. I will describe how things happen. I place under the bell-glass a Philanthus and two or three Hive-bees.
The miscreant's posture now becomes a striking piece of acting: you can read in it the fierce longings of the creature lying in ambush, the crafty waiting for the moment to commit the crime. The choice is made: the Philanthus pounces on her prey. Turn by turn tumbling over and tumbled, the two insects roll upon the ground. The tumult soon abates; and the murderess prepares to strangle her capture.
The going and coming is almost continuous until the storehouse is full. The burrows of the Philanthus know nothing of such animation, even in a populous colony. In vain my vigils prolonged themselves into whole mornings or afternoons, and only very rarely does the mother who has entered with a bee set forth upon a second expedition.
I will spare him the recital of my suspicions, my gropings and my failures and will come straight to the results of my long investigation. Everything has its harmonious reason for existence. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus pursues her habit of profaning corpses solely to satisfy her greed. What does the emptied crop portend?
The costly habit of living on prey, which does not favour large populations, was maintained for the feeble larvae; but the vigorous adult broke herself of it to lead an easier and more prosperous life. Thus, gradually, was formed the Philanthus of our day; thus was acquired the twofold diet of the various predatory insects our contemporaries.
Well, I make a present of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, and without the least regret; I do not believe a single word of it, and I confess my profound ignorance of the origin of the twofold system of diet. One thing I do see more clearly after all my experiments and research: the tactics of the Philanthus.
Also, I was engaged in another investigation, which might easily be conducted simultaneously with the one suggested: I wanted to study, with all the leisure of work done at home, the operating-methods employed by the different Hunting Wasps. I therefore made use, for the Philanthus, of the process of experimenting under glass which I roughly outlined when speaking of the Odynerus.
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