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The sense of property exists in a high degree among the Mason-bees; with them right comes before might, and "the intruder is always finally dislodged." But can we find in the insect anything analogous to what we term devotion, attachment, affectionate feeling? There are facts which lead us to believe we may.
It is time that we thought of experimenting. The Mason-bees intended for the journey must be marked with a sign whereby I may know them. A solution of gum arabic, thickened with a colouring-powder, red, blue or some other shade, is the material which I use to mark my travellers. The variety in hue will save me from confusing the subjects of my different experiments.
The Osmiae make their partitions with mud or with a paste of chewed leaves; the Mason-bees build with cement; the Pelopaeus-wasps fashion clay pots; the Megachiles made disks cut from leaves into urns; the Anthidia felt cotton into purses; the Resin-bees cement together little bits of gravel with gum; the Carpenter-bees and the Lithurgi bore holes in timber; the Anthophorae tunnel the roadside slopes.
As the extracting-tool is not free, the extraction does not take place. I expected to see the Bee relinquish her mortar and then proceed to remove the encumbrance. A dab of mortar more or less is not a serious business. I had already noticed that it takes my Mason-bees a journey of three or four minutes to collect one. The pollen-expeditions last longer, a matter of ten or fifteen minutes.
At the time of its deliverance, the Mason-bees, who work in May, have long disappeared. The nests on the pebbles are all closed, the provisioning is finished, the larvae are sleeping in their yellow cocoons.
Nor has meteorology aught to do with the case: the climate has not varied in those few miles of transit. My Mason-bees have not learnt from any experience of heat, cold, dryness and damp: an existence of a few weeks' duration does not allow of this.
One of these is the Mason-bee of the Walls. I need not describe again her dome-shaped nest, built on a pebble, which is now so well-known to us. "The Mason-bees": chapter 1. Each mother chooses her stone and works on it in solitude. She is an ungracious landowner and guards her site jealously, driving away any Mason who even looks as though she might alight on it.
Let us go deeper into the question and bring other workers into evidence, those especially who, better equipped perhaps and at any rate better fitted for hard work, attack the difficulties of their trade boldly and look down upon alien establishments with scorn. Of this number are the Chalicodomae, the Mason-bees proper.
He had discovered on the banks of the Aygues, at some miles from the village, a deserted hut where the Mason-bees had established themselves in a numerous colony. He proposed to take the wheelbarrow, in which to move the blocks of cells; but I objected: the jolting of the vehicle over the rough paths might jeopardise the contents of the cells. A basket carried on the shoulder was deemed safer.
To which of them will the inheritance of the old nest revert? As sisters, they have equal rights to it: so our code would decide, since the day when it shook itself free of the old savage right of primogeniture. But the Mason-bees have not yet got beyond the primitive basis of property, the right of the first occupant.
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