Solitary Bees and Wasps 



begun to store it with bee bread, the intruder secretly and 

 rapidly enters and deposits a single egg in the food mass. 

 The leaf-cutter, unaware that there is anything wrong, 

 continues her work, fully stocks her cell with food, lays 

 an egg therein and seals it with a circular piece of leaf. 

 Then she proceeds with the construction of another cell in 

 blissful ignorance that her labour is in vain. The larva 

 of the parasite bee is the first to hatch, but it is followed 

 a little later by the rightful owner of the cell. Both larvae 

 feed on the bee bread, the parasite from below, the leaf- 

 cutter from above. 



The parasite, having the bigger appetite, grows the 

 faster and soon reaches his less fortunate cell companion. 

 When they meet a battle royal takes place, in which the 

 larger and stronger parasite always comes off victorious. 

 Not content with this treatment, and having finished the 

 store of bee bread, it makes a meal of its victim. A little 

 later, instead of a leaf-cutter bee, a parasite bee emerges 

 from the cell. As the leaf-cutter, though ingenious, can 

 hardly be called a friend of the rose-grower, perhaps the 

 tragedy enacted in the leafy cell is all for the best, in this 

 best of all worlds. 



The carpenter-bees, or rather their architectural efforts, 

 are not altogether dissimilar to those of the bees we 

 have just mentioned. For the most part they are tropical 

 insects and remarkable for their enormous size. In 

 appearance they somewhat resemble very large bumble- 

 bees, though their bodies are flatter and less hairy. Some- 

 times the males and females are so unlike one another 

 that they have been described by entomologists as 

 belonging to different species. Whatever the species and 

 whatever its habitat, the carpenter-bee always works in the 

 same methodical way that is to say, when it does work, 

 for not all bees are industrious and this bee, given the 

 opportunity, is one of the lazy ones, using an old nest in 

 preference to making a new one. 



Let us watch this insect carpenter at work and note that 



c 33 



