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Updated: June 21, 2025
To persuade the Osmia to nidify in a single tube long enough to receive the whole of her laying and at the same time narrow enough to leave her only just the possibility of admittance appears to me a project without the slightest chance of success: the Bee would stubbornly refuse such a dwelling or would content herself with entrusting only a very small portion of her eggs to it.
From dimension 2 she has descended to dimension 1 without ceasing to be the same insect, despite the change of diet; and at the same time both sexes are present in the three nurselings, despite the variation in the quantity of victuals. When she issues from the cocoons of the Three-horned Osmia, especially the female cocoons, she attains the greatest development that I know of.
So far then as their building-materials are concerned, the Osmiae whom I have been able to observe are divided into two classes: one building compartments with mud, the other with a green-tinted vegetable putty. The first section includes the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, both so remarkable for the horny tubercles on their faces.
I refuse to go to this length in my conjectures, not that instinct seems to me incapable of such feats, but because of the particulars obtained from the three-horned Osmia and the two mason bees. In the cells of these three species, I see the number of larvae put out to nurse vary in so elastic a fashion that I must abandon all idea of proportionate adjustment.
The impression left by this new policy was so profound that heredity bequeathed it to posterity, in ever-increasing proportions, until at last parasitic habits became definitely fixed. The Chalicodoma of the Sheds, followed by the Three-horned Osmia, will teach us what to think of this conjecture.
The Osmia, in fact, in view of her small dimensions, collects but a very scanty store of food: a little loaf of pollen and honey, hardly the size of an average pea. Such a ration is insufficient for the Dioxys. I have described her as a waster of food when her larva is established, according to custom, in the cell of the Mason-bee. This description no longer applies; not in the very least.
The Bee once more ceases laying her plaster and again goes and touches the front wall with her forehead and the back wall with the tip of her abdomen. Looking at that body trembling with eagerness, extended to its full length to touch the two ends of the room, how can we fail to grasp the architect's grave problem? The Osmia is measuring; and her measure is her body. Has she quite done, this time?
Nor is the cone-shaped aperture special to the Osmia: I have seen it made by the other bramble-dwellers through my thick disks of sorghum-pith. Under natural conditions, the partitions, which, for that matter, are very thin, are destroyed absolutely, for the contraction of the cell at the top leaves barely the width which the insect needs.
By keeping to the first cell, which it is not necessary to empty in order to reach the next, she can utilize the provisions on the spot and shorten to that extent the longest part of her work. As usurpations of this kind have had ample time to become inveterate, to become inbred in the race, I ask for a descendant of the Osmia who eats her grandmother's egg in order to establish her own egg.
If the number be even and my column at that time consisted usually of ten one half goes out on the right, the other on the left. If the number be odd eleven, for instance the Osmia in the middle goes out indiscriminately by the right or left exit.
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