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Updated: June 21, 2025
Remnants of cocoons, dirt consisting of spoilt honey, bits of plaster from broken partitions, remains of dried Mollusc at the bottom of a shell: these and much other insanitary refuse must first of all disappear. Violently the Osmia tugs at the offending object and tears it out; and then off she goes in a desperate hurry, to dispose of it far away from the study.
When we see Three-horned Osmiae enter the crevices of old walls and of stone-heaps, there is no doubt about their occupation: they are getting free lodgings out of the old Snail-shells of those labyrinths. The Horned Osmia, who is less common, might easily also be less ingenious, that is to say, less rich in varieties of houses. She seems to scorn empty shells.
The answer can be only this: of two lodgings at her disposal the Osmia selects the one that provides a comfortable home at a minimum outlay. She economizes her strength when restoring an old nest; she economizes it when replacing the Snail-shell by the reed.
Of a column of ten laid in a horizontal tube open at both ends, five made their way to the right and five to the left. "The Mason-bees" by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim. Incomplete as it is, this symmetry shows us how unwise it were to generalize from the conclusions to which the Three-pronged Osmia leads us.
The Osmia is in the presence of one of these pear-shaped hollows. It is a find that must be employed to the best advantage: a prize of this sort is rare and falls only to fortune's favourites. To lodge two females in it at once is impossible; there is not sufficient room. To lodge two males in it would be undue generosity to a sex that is entitled to but the smallest consideration.
Immediately after a protective barrier comes the row of cells, which vary considerably in number, like those of the Osmia in her reed. Strings of about a dozen are rare; the most frequent consist of five or six. No less subject to variation is the number of pieces joined to make a cell: pieces of two kinds, some, the oval ones, forming the honey-pot; others, the round ones, serving as a lid.
This marvellous prerogative the Osmia shares with a host of apiaries, in which the unequal development of the males and females requires an unequal provision of space and of nourishment for the future larvae. For the females, who exceed in point of size, huge cells and abundant provision; for the more puny males, narrow cells and a smaller ration of pollen and honey.
The two other Osmiae, with their great disparity in size between the two sexes, have to be careful about the twofold consideration of board and lodging. The more I thought about this curious question, the more probable it appeared to me that the irregular series of the Three-pronged Osmia and the regular series of the other Osmiae and of the Bees in general were all traceable to a common law.
The first return and the last two seem to point to some relation between the abundance of provisions and the number of consumers. When the mother comes upon the bountiful larva of the masked Anthophora, she gives it half-a-hundred to feed; with the Stelis and the blue Osmia, niggardly rations both, she contents herself with half-a-dozen.
In that case, the whole difficulty would be removed: each Osmia, as she rent her silken prison, would find a clear road in front of her, the Osmiae nearer the outlet having gone out before her. But is this really how things happen?
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