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Updated: June 2, 2025
All that we now have to do is to soften the gum a little and then dab the thing at once on the Mason-bee's back, so that the broken needle runs parallel with the spine. Other engines of the same kind are prepared and due note taken of their poles, so as to enable me to point the south pole at the insect's head in some cases and at the opposite end in others.
Let us visit the nests of Chalicodoma muraria in July, detaching them from their pebbles with a sideward blow, as I explained when telling the story of the Anthrax. The Mason-bee's cocoons with two inhabitants, one devouring, the other in process of being devoured, are numerous enough to allow me to gather some dozens in the course of a morning, before the sun becomes unbearably hot.
The sting can be avoided with a little dexterity, but not always. You have to put up with it. In any case, the Mason-bee's sting is far less painful than that of the Hive-bee. The white spot is dropped on the thorax; the Mason flies off; and the mark dries on the journey.
Eventually they become utter ruins, abandoned to the Spiders and to various smaller Bees or Wasps, who take up their quarters in the crumbling rooms. As we see, an old nest is hardly ever capable of containing the Mason-bee's entire laying, which calls for some fifteen apartments. The number of rooms at her disposal is most unequal, but always very small.
Why cannot she allow the larva, her mess-mate, to take advantage of the remains and afterwards to shift for itself as best it can? But no: the Mason-bee's offspring must needs be stupidly sacrificed on the top of provisions which will only grow mouldy and useless! I should be reduced to the gloomy lucubrations of a Schopenhauer if I once let myself begin on parasitism.
The Mason-bee's grub is therefore emptied by the Leucopsis' larva while it is in a semifluid state and deep in the torpor of the nymphosis. The last fortnight in July and the first fortnight in August are the best times to witness the repast, which I have seen going on for twelve and fourteen days.
Something perhaps happens, at the very commencement of infancy, that may mislead me afterwards. I must apply to the egg itself if I would learn the secret which the grub will not reveal. I therefore resume my observations in the first fortnight of July, when the Leucopses are beginning to visit busily both Mason-bee's nests.
In these short series, both sexes are usually present; and, if the Mason-bee's chamber is at the end of the passage, it is inhabited by a female Osmia. We come back to what the short tubes and the old nests of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles have already taught us.
Such as it is, the result, which is probably under the actual figure in many cases, is of a kind that gives us a vivid idea of the Mason-bee's activity. The complete nest will comprise about fifteen cells. Moreover, the heap of cells will be coated at the end with a layer of cement a good finger's-breadth thick.
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