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Updated: May 24, 2025
This feeble insect is not capable of perforating my partitions; it nibbles at them a little; and I had to judge the direction from the marks of its mandibles. These marks, which are not always very plain, do not yet allow me to pronounce an opinion. Solenius vagus, who is a skilful borer, behaved differently from the Osmia. In a column of ten, the whole exodus was made in one direction.
Whereas some Bees, such as the Anthidium and the Chalicodoma, share the Osmia's talent for using the twofold exit, others, such as the Solenius and the Leaf-cutter, behave like a flock of sheep and follow the first that goes out.
This seems to me rather insanitary. To avoid the humidity, or for other reasons which escape me, the Solenius does not dig very far into her bramble-stump and consequently can stack but a small number of cells in it. A series of five cocoons gives me first four females and then one male; another series, also of five, contains first three females, with two males following.
The two species adopted are Solenius vagus, which quits the bramble at the end of June, and Osmia detrita, which comes a little earlier, in the first fortnight of the same month. I therefore alternate Osmia-cocoons and Solenius-cocoons, with the latter at the top of the series, either in glass tubes or between two bramble-troughs joined into a cylinder. The result of this promiscuity is striking.
The brambles house several of these: Solenius vagus, who stores up Flies; Psen atratus, who provides her grubs with a heap of Plant-lice; Trypoxylon figulus, who feeds them with Spiders. Solenius vagus digs her gallery in a bramble-stick that is lopped short, but still fresh and green. The house of this Fly-huntress, therefore, suffers from damp, as the sap enters, especially on the lower floors.
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