26 THE HOME OF THE BEES. 



The interesting habits of the Leaf-cutting, or Tailor bee 

 (Megachile), have always attracted attention. This bee is a 

 stout, thick-bodied insect, with a large, square head, stout, 

 sharp, scissors-like jaws, and with a thick mass of stout, dense 

 hairs on the under side of the tail for carrying pollen, as she is 

 not provided with the pollen-basket of the Honey and Humble 

 bees. 



The Megachile lays its eggs in burrows in the stems of the 

 elder (Fig. 24), which we have received from Mr. James Angus; 

 we have also found them in the hollows of the Locust tree. Mr. 

 r. W. Putnam thus speaks of the economy of M. centuncularis, 

 our most common species. "My attention was first called, on 

 the 2Gth of June, to a female busily engaged in bringing pieces 

 of leaf to her cells, which she was building under a board, on 

 the roof of the piazza, directly under my window. Nearly the 

 whole morning was occupied by the bee in bringing pieces of 

 leaf from a rose bush growing about ten yards from her cells, 

 returning at intervals of a half minute to a minute with the 

 pieces, wliich she carried in such a manner as not to impede 

 her steps when she alighted near her hole." When the Leaf- 

 cutter bee wishes to cut out a piece of a leaf (Fig. 25) she alights 

 upon the leaf, and in a few seconds swiftly runs her scissors- 

 like jaws around thi-ough it, bearing off the piece in her hind 

 •legs. " About noon she had probably completed the cell, upon 

 which she had been engaged, as, during the afternoon, she was 

 occupied in bringing pollen, preparatory to laying her single 

 egg in the cell. For about twenty days the bee continued at 

 work, building new cells and supplying them with pollen. , . . 

 On the 28th of July, upon removing the board, it was found that 

 the bee had made thirty cells, arranged in nine rows of unequal 

 length, some being slightly curved to adapt them to the space 

 under the board. The longest row contained six cells, and was 

 two and three-quarters inches in length ; the whole leaf struc- 

 ture being equal to a length of fifteen inches. Upon making an 

 estimate of the pieces of leaf in this structure, it wfts ascertained 

 that there must have been at least a thousand pieces used. In 

 addition to the labor of making the cells, this bee, unassisted 

 in all her duties, had to collect the requisite amount of pollen 

 (and honey ?) for each cell, and lay her eggs therein, when com- 

 pleted. Upon carefully cutting out a portion of one of the cells, 

 a full-grown larva was seen engaged in spinning a slight silken 



