NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



there is no temptation to inconstancy, for there is 

 more than enough for all comers. Did Thomas Moore 

 have some such case in mind, or did he simply draw 

 upon imagination, when he wrote his familiar verse : 



" The bee through many a garden roves 

 And hums his lay of courtship o'er, 

 But when he finds the flower he loves 

 He settles there, and roves no more " ? 



It is a pretty emblem of constancy, indeed; but one 

 must needs revise the poet's facts. The bee never " set- 

 tles" among the flowers. It is a rover always, ex- 

 cept that now and then an errant male will lodge for 

 a night in a convenient blossom; a dainty place for 

 camping-out, one fancies — for a bee! Our golden-rod 

 Andrena is an autumn wanderer; but her family, for 

 the most part, are out early in the spring, and complete 

 their flitting season in forty-eight days. Here at Brook- 

 camp a large colony appeared (1906) in mid-April. 



The burrowing bees are commonly ranked with soli- 

 tary insects. Certainly they are not "social" — i.e., 

 living in organized communities, like honey bees. But 

 one might venture to call them "neighborly insects," 

 for they love to make their cavernous hermitages in 

 well -peopled neighborhoods, like the monks of the 

 ancient Thebaid. Their burrow -sites are preferably 

 upon hard, dry spots, sandy or loamy, sparsely covered 

 with grass, and with a bit of slope, maybe. Therein 

 the mother will sink a tubular shaft eight or ten inches 

 deep and about a quarter of an inch wide. On either 

 side of this she will dig out small, ovate cells, five or six 

 in all, which she duly lines, provisions, and supplies 

 with an egg apiece. 



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