Solitary Bees and Wasps 



she leaves nothing to chance. Her first care is to select 

 a site for her home, and this is either a dead tree, a wooden 

 post or some similar structure. Having chosen a suitable 

 spot, she proceeds to bore a perfectly symmetrical hole, 

 just large enough to permit her to enter, across the grain 

 of the wood. She bores in this manner, using her jaws 

 for the purpose, till the cavity is just the length of her 

 body. Then she turns at right angles and tunnels directly 

 downwards, with the grain, for from eighteen inches to two 

 feet. Her rate of progress depends largely on the hard- 

 ness of the wood, but in moderately hard timber she 

 tunnels almost half-an-inch a day. 



All the sawdust which is made during her work is used 

 by the bee at a later stage and for the time being is care- 

 fully stored away in safe keeping, usually in some hollow 

 in the tree on which she is working. Having completed 

 her task as a carpenter, the bee flies around and seeks 

 honey and pollen with which she stores the bottom of her 

 tunnel. On this " bee bread " she deposits a single egg 

 and then proceeds to build a roof, composed of the saw- 

 dust she has saved, mingled with her saliva. The roof or 

 partitions which form chambers in the tunnel vary in 

 structure with the different kinds of carpenter-bee. In 

 general, they are about the thickness of a penny and 

 composed of about four layers of macerated sawdust. 

 Each partition forms a roof to the cell below and a floor 

 to the one above ; the roofs are rough and flat, whilst the 

 floors are smooth and concave. The bee repeats her work 

 time and again till, in the end, the completed nest is com- 

 posed of a tunnel divided into several chambers, often as 

 many as twelve, one above the other. In each chamber 

 there is a store of " bee bread " and a single egg. When 

 her labours are almost completed, the last act of the 

 mother bee is to seal the mouth of the tunnel with the 

 same material she has used in making its partitions. 



There is a family of very small yet very active little bees, 

 some of which are native to this country, which are known 



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