The Mason-bees 



door, the owner soon puts her to flight. No 

 such Indiscretion Is tolerated. Every Bee has 

 her home and every home its Bee. 



All goes well until just before the end of 

 the work. The tubes are then closed at the 

 orifice with a thick plug of earth ; nearly the 

 whole swarm has disappeared; there remain 

 on the spot a score of tatterdemalions in 

 threadbare fleeces, worn out by a month's 

 hard toil. These laggards have not finished 

 their laying. There is no lack of unoccupied 

 tubes, for I take care to remove some of those 

 which are full and to replace them by others 

 that have not yet been used. Very few of the 

 Bees decide to take possession of those new 

 homes, which differ in no particular from the 

 earlier ones; and even then they build only a 

 small number of cells, which are often mere 

 attempts at partitions. 



They want something different: a nest be- 

 longing to some one else. They bore through 

 the plug of the inhabited tubes, a work of no 

 great difficulty, for we have here not the hard 

 cement of the Chalicodoma, but a simple lid 

 of dried mud. When the entrance is cleared, 

 a cell appears, with its store of provisions and 

 its egg. The Osmla snatches that fragile 

 240 



