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Updated: May 31, 2025
The Sitares, entrusting their eggs to the very corridors through which the Anthophora is bound to pass, spare their larvæ a host of dangers which the larvæ of the Meloe have to run, for these, born far from the dwellings of the Bees, are obliged to make their own way to their hymenopterous foster-parents.
What invaluable documents for the entomologist and the historian of the evolution of the species are those multiple and fabulous metamorphoses of the Sitares and the Meloïdae which this indefatigable inquirer has revealed in all their astonishing phases!
The Sitares, though less given to change of lodging, are likewise able to inhabit nests of different species. They are very common in the cells of Anthophora pilipes; but I have found them also, in very small numbers, it is true, in the cells of A. personata.
Were it necessary to prove this, it would be enough to say that we never see these larvæ attempt to pierce the skin of the Bee, or else to nibble at a hair or two, nor do we see them increase in size so long as they are on the Bee's body. To the Meloes, as to the Sitares, the Anthophora serves merely as a vehicle which conveys them to their goal, the victualled cell.
Circumstances, however, favoured me more than I dared hope and, after six hours' labour, in which the pick played a great part, I became the possessor, by the sweat of my brow, of a considerable number of cells occupied by Sitares and two other cells appropriated by Meloes.
But then why do the cells usurped by the Sitares retain not the slightest trace of the forcible entry which is indispensable?
On reaching the extreme end of the petals, they fasten to it either with their caudal appendages, or perhaps with a sticky substance similar to that furnished by the anal button of the Sitares; and, with their bodies hanging outside and their six legs free, they bend about in every direction and stretch as far out as they can, as though striving to touch an object out of their reach.
The young Sitares, embedded in the fleece, at right angles to the Anthophora's body, head inwards, rump outwards, do not stir from the point which they have selected, a point near the Bee's shoulders.
The Oil-beetles, therefore, lacking the instinct of the Sitares, are endowed with incomparably greater fecundity. The richness of their ovaries atones for the insufficiency of instinct by proportioning the number of germs in accordance with the risks of destruction. What transcendent harmony is this, which thus holds the scales between the fecundity of the ovaries and the perfection of instinct!
My attempts, based upon those which I had made with the Sitares, resulted in the same failure.
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