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Updated: June 15, 2025
How comes it that the experience of the ages, that experience which, we are told, teaches the animal so many things, has not taught the Bee the first element of apiarian wisdom: a deep-seated horror of the Philanthus? Can the poor wretch take comfort by relying on her trusty dagger? But she yields to none in her ignorance of fencing; she stabs without method, at random.
The evolution from scarcity to moderation and from moderation to plenty has led to the resources of husbandry. The animals forestalled us this path of progress. The ancestors of the Philanthus, in the remote ages of the lacustrian tertiary formations, lived by prey in both the larval and the adult forms: they hunted for themselves as well as for the family.
This refusal to touch the unwholesome or distasteful honey is connected with principles of nutrition which are too general to constitute a gastronomic peculiarity of the Philanthus. The other carnivorous larvae, at least in the order of the Hymenoptera, are bound to share it. Let us try. We will go to work as before.
What do these four huntresses, and others of similar habits, do with their victims when the crops of the latter are full of honey? They must follow the example of the Philanthus or their offspring would perish; they must squeeze and manipulate the dead bee until it yields up its honey.
With the exception of the Philanthus, tempted from time to time by a bumper of honey, the predatory Wasps do not hunt on their own account; they have their victualling-time, when the egg-laying is imminent, when the family calls for food. Outside these periods, the finest heads of game might well leave these nectar-bibbers indifferent.
How tenderly he speaks of them; with what solicitude he observes them; with what love he follows the progress of their nurslings; the young grubs wriggling in his test-tubes, with doddering heads, are happy; and he himself is happy to see them "well-fed and shining with health." He pities the bee stabbed by the Philanthus "in the holy joys of labour."
In many Bees and Wasps, indeed, the male and the female differ not only in certain details of internal or external structure a point of view which does not affect the present problem but also in length and bulk, which depend in a high degree on the quantity of food. Let us consider in particular the Bee-eating Philanthus. Compared with the female, the male is a mere abortion.
Another ardent huntress, the Interrupted Scolia, refused the Cetonia-grub, which is of like habits with the Anoxia-larva; the Two-banded Scolia also refused the Anoxia. She, a Philanthus, take this Fly for a Bee! What next!
May it not be that...? Why, yes.... After all, who knows?... Let us try along these lines. The mother's first care is the welfare of the family. So far, we have seen the Philanthus hunting only for her stomach's sake; let us watch her hunting as a mother. Nothing is easier than to distinguish the two performances.
I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the empty stomach mean? May it not Yes! But, after all, who knows? Well, let us follow up the scent. The first care of the mothers is the welfare of the family. So far all we know of the Philanthus concerns her talent for murder.
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