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Updated: June 21, 2025
One of them, the Three-horned Osmia, did better still: as I have described, she built her nests in my study, as plentifully as I could wish. We will consult this last, who has furnished me with documents beyond my fondest hopes, and begin by asking her of how many eggs her average laying consists.
Then what does the Osmia do when she repeatedly stops to touch the front partition with her forehead and the back partition, the one in the course of building, with the tip of her abdomen? I have no idea what she does or what she has in view. I leave the interpretation of this performance to others, more venturesome than I. Plenty of theories are based on equally shaky foundations.
This industrious one was also exceedingly prolific. She supplied me with a family of twenty-six, the largest which I have ever obtained from one Osmia. Well, this abnormal progeny consisted of twenty-five males and one female. There is no need to go on, after this magnificent example, especially as the other series would all, without exception, give us the same result.
Two species have come hurrying up to take part in the joys of the almond-tree: first, the Horned Osmia, clad in black velvet on the head and breast and in red velvet on the abdomen; and, a little later, the Three-horned Osmia, whose livery must be red and red only.
In this species the spiral is wide open, so that the Osmia, penetrating as far down as the helical passage permits, finds, immediately above the point which is too narrow to pass, the space necessary for the cell of a female. This cell is succeeded by others, wider still, always for females, arranged in a line in the same way as in a straight tube.
She goes out backwards, reaches the outside, turns round and goes in again, but this time the opposite way, so as to brush off the load of pollen from her abdomen on to the heap. If the gallery is at all long, this crawling backwards becomes troublesome after a time; and the Osmia soon abandons a passage that is too small to allow of free movement.
My investigations, however frequent and minute, in no way hinder the peaceable Bee, who remains absorbed in her maternal duties. I mark a plentiful number of my guests with a variety of dots on the thorax, which enables me to follow any one Osmia from the beginning to the end of her laying.
Or did the Osmia, finding the cut reed that answered her requirements, instal herself there straightway, scorning her ancient dwelling, the Snail-shell? These questions called for a reply; and they have received one. Let us describe how things happened. Near Serignan are some great quarries of coarse limestone, characteristic of the miocene formation of the Rhone valley.
Her abode, which would not be more absolutely silent if deserted, her shell, with its vast untenanted porch, will not tempt the earlier Resin-bee, who herself wants apartments right at the far end of the spiral, but it might suit the Osmia, who knows how to fill the shell with cells up to the mouth.
We know that the Three-horned Osmia prefers to haunt the habitations of the Bees who nidify in populous colonies, such as the Mason-bee of the Sheds and the Hairy-footed Anthophora, in whose nests I have noted similar facts. Thus the sex of the egg is optional.
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