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Old, disused hurdles supplied me with reeds inhabited from end to end by the Horned Osmia. In both cases I obtained the same results and the same conclusions as with the Three-horned Osmia. I return to the latter, nidifying under my eyes in some old nests of the Mason-bee of the Walls, which I had placed within her reach, mixed up with the tubes.
Let us in the first place consult the old nests of the Mason-bee of the Shrubs. I have said that these mortar spheroids, pierced all over with little cylindrical cavities, are a adopted pretty eagerly by the Three-horned Osmia, who colonizes them before my eyes with females in the deep cells and males in the shallow cells. That is how things go when the old nest remains in its natural state.
The partitions and the closing-plug of the Horned and of the Three-horned Osmia are made, as we have seen, of a sort of mud which water instantly reduces to pap. With the upright position of the reeds, the stopper of the opening would receive the rain and would become diluted; the ceilings of the storeys would fall in and the family would perish by drowning.
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.
In the same bramble-stump, the two sexes occur very irregularly, as though at random. Why this mixture in the series of cocoons of a Bee closely related to the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, who stack theirs methodically by separate sexes in the hollow of a reed? What the Bee of the brambles does cannot her kinswomen of the reeds do too?
The work in the huge city under the eaves begins thus: the old cells, of which, by the way, the good-natured owner yields a portion to Latreille's Osmia and to the Three-horned Osmia alike, are first made clean and wholesome and cleared of broken plaster and then provisioned and shut.
Her failures, however splendid, have always found small mercy at her hands. But it was little like a failure he looked, the giant who now heaved his terrible, three-horned front from the lilied surface of the lagoon wherein he had been wallowing, and came ponderously ploughing his way ashore.
Well, the small cocoons, those in the narrow front cells, with their scanty store of provisions, all belong to males; the big cocoons, those in the spacious and well-stocked cells at the back, all belong to females. The conclusion is definite: the laying of the Three-horned Osmia consists of two distinct groups, first a group of females and then a group of males.
I have spoken of the first in another volume; I have mentioned its pseudochrysalis found in the cells of two Osmiæ, namely, the Three-pronged Osmia, which piles its cells in a dry bramble-stem, and the Three-horned Osmia and also Latreille's Osmia, both of which exploit the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds.
In the same bramble-stump, the two sexes occur very irregularly, as though at random. Why this mixture in the series of cocoons of a Bee closely related to the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, who stack theirs methodically by separate sexes in the hollow of a reed? What the Bee of the brambles does cannot her kinswomen of the reeds do too?
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