108 FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



four or five inches. The cells are at the far end. If we 

 wish to watch the labours of the industrious Bee we must 

 visit her workshop during the latter half of May. Then 

 but at a respectful distance we may see, in all its bewilder- 

 ing activity, the tumultuous, buzzing swarm, busied with 

 the building and provisioning of the cells. 



But it has been most often during the months of August 

 and September, the happy months of the summer holidays, 

 that I have visited the banks inhabited by the Anthophora. 

 At this season all is silent near the nests : the work has long 

 been completed : and numbers of Spiders' webs line the 

 crevices or plunge their silken tubes into the Bees' corridors. 

 That is no reason, however, for hastily abandoning the city 

 that was once so full of life and bustle, and now appears 

 deserted. A few inches below the surface, thousands of 

 grubs are imprisoned in their cells of clay, resting until the 

 coming spring. Surely these grubs, which are paralysed 

 and incapable of self-defence, must be a temptation fat 

 little morsels as they are to some kind of parasite, some 

 kind of insect stranger in search of prey. The matter is worth 

 inquiring into. 



Two facts are at once noticeable. Some dismal-looking 

 Flies, half black and half white, are flying indolently from 

 gallery to gallery, evidently with the object of laying their 

 eggs there. Many of them are hanging dry and lifeless in 

 the Spiders' webs. At other places the entire surface of a 

 bank is hung with the dried corpses of a certain Beetle, called 

 the Sitaris. Among the corpses, however, are a few live 

 Beetles, both male and female. The female Beetle invari- 

 ably disappears into the Bees' dwelling. Without a doubt 

 she, too, lays her eggs there. 



If we give a few blows of the pick to the surface of the 

 bank we shall find out something more about these things. 

 During the early days of August this is what we shall see : 

 the cells forming the top layer are unlike those at a greater 

 depth. The difference is owing to the fact that the same 



