THE BEE. 



527 



trees that are standing, for the wood it makes 

 choice of is half rotten. The holes are not 

 made directly forward, but turning to one 

 side, and have an opening sufficient to admit 

 one's middle finger, from whence runs the 

 inner apartment, generally twelve or fifteen 

 inches long. The instruments used in boring 

 these cavities are their teeth ; the cavity is 

 usually branched into three or four apartments ; 

 and in each of these they lay their eggs, to 

 the number of ten or twelve, each separate 

 and distinct from the rest : the egg is involved 

 in a sort of paste, which serves at once for the 

 young animal's protection and nourishment. 

 The grown bees, however, feed upon small 

 insects, particularly a louse, of a reddish brown 

 colour, of the size of a small pin's head. 



" Some days after it was finished, we cut into the 

 post, and exposed this nest to view. It consisted of six 

 cells of a somewhat square shape, the wood forming the 

 literal walls ; and each was separated from the one ad- 

 jacent by a partition of clay, of the thickness of a 

 playing card. The wood was not lined with any ex- 

 traneous substance, but was worked as smooth as if it 

 had been chiselled by a joiner. There were five cells, 

 arranged in a very singular manner two being almost 

 horizontal, two perpendicular, and one oblique. The 

 depth to which the wood was excavated, in this instance, 

 was considerably less than what we have observed in 

 other species which dig perpendicular galleries several 

 inches deep in posts and garden-seats ; and they are 

 inferior in ingenuity to the carpentry of a bee described 

 by Reaumur, which has not been ascertained to be a 

 native of Britain, though a single indigenous species of 

 the genus has been doubtingly mentioned, and is figured 

 by Kirby, in his valuable 'Monographia.' If it ever be 

 found here, its large size and beautiful violet-coloured 

 wings will render mistakes impossible. 



" The violet carpenter-bee usually selects an upright 

 piece of wood, into which she bores obliquely for about 

 an inch ; and then, changing the direction, works per- 

 pendicularly, and parallel to the sides of the wood, for 

 twelve or fifteen inches, and half an inch in breadth. 

 Sometimes the bee is contented with one or two of these 

 excavations ; at other times, when the wood is adapted 

 to it, she scoops out three or four a task which some- 

 times requires several weeks of incessant labour. The 

 tunnel in the wood, however, is only one part of the 

 work ; for the little architect has afterwards to divide 

 the whole into cells, somewhat less than an inch in depth. 

 It is necessary, for the proper growth of her progeny, 

 that each should be separated from the other, and be pro- 

 vided with adequate food. She knows, most exactly, 

 the quantity of food which each grub will require, during 

 its growth ; and she therefore does not hesitate to cut it 

 .off from any additional supply. In constructing her cells, 

 she does not employ clay, like the bee which we have 

 mentioned above, but the sawdust, if we may call it so, 

 which she has collected in gnawing out the gallery. It 

 would not, therefore, have suited her design to scatter this 

 about, as our carpenter-bee did. The violet bee, on 

 the contrary, collects her gnawings into a little store- 

 heap for future use, at a short distance from her nest. 

 She proceeds thus : At the bottom of her excavation 

 she deposits an egg, and over it fills a space nearly an 

 inch high with the pollen of flowers, made into a paste 

 with honey. She then covers this over with a ceiling 

 composed of cemented sawdust, which also serves for 

 the floor of the next chamber above it. For this purpose, 

 she cements round the wall a ring of wood chips, taken 



Mason-Bees make their cells with a sort of 

 mortar made of earth, which they build against 

 a wall that is exposed to the sun. The mortar, 

 which at first is soft, soon becomes as hard as 

 stone, and in this their eggs are laid. Each 

 nest contains seven or eight cells, an egg in 

 every cell, placed regularly one over the other. 

 If the nests remain unhurt, or want but little 

 repairs, they make use of them the year en- 

 suing ; and thus they often serve three or four 

 years successively. From the strength of 

 their houses, one would think these bees in 

 perfect security ; yet none are more exposed 

 than they. A worm with very strong teeth 

 is often found to bore into their little fortifica- 

 tions, and devour their young. 



The Ground- Bee builds its nest in the earth, 



from her store-heap; and within this ring forms another, 

 gradually contracting the diameter till she has constructed 

 circular plate, about the thickness of a crown-piece, 

 and of considerable hardness. This plate of course ex- 

 hibits concentric circles, somewhat similar to the annual 

 circles in the cross section of a tree. In the same man- 

 ner she proceeds till she has completed ten or twelve 

 cells ; and then she closes the main entrance with a bar- 

 rier of similar materials. 



"Let us compare the progress of this little joiner with 

 a human artisan one who has been long practised in his 

 trade, and has the most perfect and complicated tools for 

 his assistance. The bee has learned nothing by practice ; 

 she makes her nest but once in her life, but it is then as 

 complete and finished as if she had made a thousand. 

 She has no pattern before her but the Architect of all 

 things has impressed a plan upon her own mind, which she 

 can realize without scale or compasses. Her two sharp 

 teeth are the only tools with which she is provided for 

 her laborious work ; and yet she bores a tunnel, twelve 

 times the length of her own body, with greater ease than 

 the workman who bores into the earth for water, with 

 his apparatus of augers adapted to every soil. Her 

 tunnel is clean and regular; she leaves no chips at the 

 bottom, for she is provident of her materials. Further, 

 she has an exquisite piece of joinery to perform, when 

 her ruder labour is accomplished. The patient bee works 

 her rings from the circumference to the centre, and she 

 produces a shelf, united with such care with her natural 

 glue, that a number of fragments are as solid as one 

 piece. 



" The violet carpenter-bee, as may be expected, oc- 

 cupies several weeks in these complicated labours ; and 

 during that period she is gradually depositing her eggs, 

 each of which is successively to become a grub, a pupa, 

 and a perfect bee. It is obvious, therefore, as she does 

 not lay all her eggs in the same place as each is separ- 

 ated from the other by a laborious process that the egg 

 which is first laid will be the earliest hatched ; and that 

 the first perfect insect, being older than its fellows in 

 the same tunnel, will strive to make its escape sooner, 

 and so on of the rest. The careful mother provides for 

 this contingency. She makes a lateral opening at the 

 bottom of the cells ; for the teeth of the young bees 

 would not be strong enough to pierce the outer wood, 

 though they can remove the cemented rings of saw-dust 

 in the interior. Reaumur observed these holes, in 

 several cases : and he further noticed another external 

 opening opposite to the middle cell, which he supposed 

 was formed, in the first instance, to shorten the distance 

 for the removal of the fragments of wood in the lower 

 half of the building." Insect Architecture. 



