NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



Thence Colletes ascends her shaft, and begins from 

 its opposite side a lateral drift. This is pushed to a 

 distance of from two to six inches, and, with its terminal 

 pouch, becomes the nursery of another larva. The sand 

 removed from this lateral (and so also with the next) 

 is dumped into the shaft, quite filling it and covering 

 over the brood-cell. This, of course, lays upon the 

 resurgent beehng the burden of digging its way to the 

 top through the overlying sand. But it has an im- 

 portant defensive office. 



The sheltering bosom of mother earth is the refuge 

 and nursery of multitudes of insects, chief among them 

 the ubiquitous and inquisitive ants. And most of 

 them, like the ants, have a sweet tooth. Fancy, then, 

 what an attraction to this subterranean horde must 

 be those sealed vases of apian honey-paste, with their 

 tender and juicy larvse, themselves a sort of vital con- 

 fection! Here, indeed, is "treasure hid in a field"; 

 and were it not for the maternal act by which, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, it is so carefully "cached," 

 there would be scant likelihood that the race of Colletes 

 and her kind would continue upon the earth. 



July finds the larvse full grown and ready to pupate; 

 and even before that the adult bees have disappeared 

 from the fields or become exceeding rare. After that 

 — ^what? Their history lies, as yet, in mistland or 

 in mythland. Do the young bees mature and bore 

 their way out to the flowery fields until the frost 

 warns them to their caves? or, which is far more 

 likely, do they keep to their cells the winter through 

 and ascend in the coming spring, true children of 

 Proserpina? At least, our field-day with the wild- 

 bee hunter proved that some Colletes, both male and 



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