THE LEAF-CUTTING BEE 



897 



labours do not begin with leaf-cutting. 

 She has, so to speak, several trades at her 

 command, and at first she plays carpenter. 

 Ha\-ing found a beam or post a part of 

 which is sufficiently decayed for her 

 purpose, she drives a tunnel into it — 

 rasping at the wood with her jaws, raking 

 the chips beneath her body by means of 

 her legs, and then, by walking backwards, 

 pushing the debris out of the hole. 



this piece rapidly — never, as far as I have 

 seen, making mistakes. First of all the 

 lozenge-shaped pieces are cut and carried 

 one by one into the tunnel, and trodden 

 into place until a thimble-shaped cell is 

 formed. Then the Bee abandons leaf- 

 cutting for a time, and resorts to the 

 flowers, from which she gathers a supply 

 of nectar and pollen. From these in- 

 gredients she compounds a sweet paste — 



ROSE LEAVES CUT BY LEAF-CUTTING BEE. 



The Leaf-cutting Bee will toil for days 

 in her tunnel. At length, when she has 

 made it long enough to suit her purpose, 

 she abandons carpentering and begins to 

 cut leaves. How she does this we have 

 already seen. She uses the pieces of rose 

 leaf to form cells, witliin each of which 

 she deposits an egg and a supply of food 

 for the young grub which will hatch in 

 due course. 



The pieces of leaf have to be of several 

 shapes in order to build u]) the cell, but 

 they may be roughly classified into lozenge- 

 shaped pieces and circular pieces. The 

 Bee's instinct seems to tell her exactly 

 wliat pieces are needed when a certain 

 stage of her work is reached, and she cuts 



114 



ultimately more than half fiUing the cell 

 with it. She then lays one egg in the cell. 

 Finally, she again resorts to the rose bush 

 and cuts some circular pieces of leaf, by 

 means of which she closes the cell's 

 entrance. When one cell is completed, 

 the industrious Bee proceeds at once to 

 foiTn another, and so on until the tunnel 

 is ahnost filled, the last inch or so being 

 plugged with wood chips. 



The number of leaf-fragments employed 

 by the Bee in the formation of each cell 

 \'aries somewhat with circiunstances, but 

 normally there are seven lozenge-shajXHl 

 and four circular pieces. In the ])hoto- 

 graph on page 8qq the reader may see 

 the Bee side bv side with its eleven pieces 



