436 Handbook of Nature-Study 



THE LEAF-CUTTER BEE 



Teacher's Story 



NE beautiful day in late June when I was picking some 

 roses, I saw a bee, almost as large as a honey-bee but 

 different in shape and darker in color, alight on a leaf 

 and moving with nervous rapidity, cut a circle out of 

 a leaf with her jaws "quicker 'n a wink;" then taking 

 the piece between her fore-feet and perhaps holding it 

 also with her jaws, she flew away, the green disk 

 looking as large in proportion to her size as a big base 

 drum hung to the neck of a small drummer. I waited 

 long for her to come back, but she came not; mean- 

 while I examined the leaves of the rose bush and 

 found many circlets, and also many oblong holes with the ends deeply 

 rounded, cut from the leaflets. 



I knew the story of the little bee and was glad I had seen her cut a 

 leaflet with her jaw shears, which work sidewise like real shears. I knew 

 that somewhere she had found a cavity big enough for her needs ; perhaps 

 she had tunneled it herself in the dead wood of some post or stump, using 

 her jaws to cut away the chips; maybe she had found a crevice beneath 

 t he shingles of a roof or beneath a stone in the field, or she may have rolled 

 a leaf; anyway, her little cave was several inches long, circular in outline 

 and large enough to admit her body. She first cut a long piece from the 

 rose leaf and folded it at the end of the tunnel ; and then she brought 

 another and another long piece and bent and shaped them into a little 

 thimble-like cup, fastening them together with some saliva glue, from her 

 mouth. After the cup was made to her liking, she went in search of food, 

 which was found in the pollen of some flowers. This pollen was carried 

 not as the honey-bees do, because she has no pollen baskets on her legs; 

 but it was dusted into the fur on the lower side of her body; as she 

 scraped the pollen off, she mixed it with some nectar which she had 

 also found in the flowers, and made it into a pasty mass and heaped it at 

 the bottom of the cup ; she probably made many visits to flowers before 

 she had a sufficient amount of this bee pastry, and then she laid an egg 

 upon it ; after this, she immediately flew back to the rose bush to cut a lid 

 for her cup. She is a nice mathematician and she cuts the lid just a little 

 larger than the rim of the cup, so that it may be pushed down in, making 

 it fit very closely around the edges; she then cuts another and perhaps 

 another of the same size and puts them over and fastened to the first cover. 

 AVhen finished, it is surely the prettiest baby basket ever made by a 

 mother, all safely enclosed to keep out enemies. But her work is then 

 only begun. She has other baby baskets to make and she perhaps makes 

 ten or more, placing one cup just ahead of another in the little tunnel. 



But what is happening meanwhile to the bee babies in the baskets? 

 The egg hatches into a little white bee grub which falls to and eats the 

 pollen and nectar paste with great eagerness. As it eats, it grows and 

 sheds its skeleton skin as often as it becomes too tight, and then eats and 

 grows some more. How many mothers would know just how much food 

 it would require to develop a child from infancy until it grows up ! This 

 bee mother knows well this amount and when the food is all gone, the little 

 bee grub is old enough to change to a pupa; it looks very different now, 



