WILD LIFE IN CALIFORNIA 



59 



meaning of this gathering was soon explained. 

 Individual bees returning to their burrowa 

 were unable to locate the places by reason of 

 the disturbance of the land marks, i. e., the 

 grasses and flowers, and were flying slowly 

 about trying to find their homes. Soon the 

 place was alive with the distracted insects, 

 some of them alighted on the ground and 

 searched for their burrows. A few were suc- 

 cessful. As I could not restore the land- 

 marks or in any way make amends for the 

 damage done I left them to themselves. 



While watching the actions of these little 

 bees it was easy to interpret their confusion. 

 The grass stalks and flower stems, before I 

 had crushed them down, were as familiar to 

 them and were as much landmarks to them 

 as would be to us the trees about our place. 

 Once in a while one little bee would rise 

 higher in its flights as if to take observations 

 of the greater landmarks indicating the 

 position of the colony; then apparently con- 

 vinced it was at the right spot, would resume 

 its search among the flattened and twisted 

 grasses. I did not have the heart to commit 

 further outrage upon the colony by using a 

 trowel, or in other words dig up their burrows 

 for information as to their nesting habits, 

 which I concluded was obtainable in some of 

 my books. These bees are the smallest of all 

 those that burrow into the ground and aver- 

 age about a quarter of an inch in length. They 

 belong to the genus Halictus. Their congre- 

 gation into communities and arrangement of 

 their homes — apartment house fashion, several 

 families in a burrow — as Comstock says — is 

 one of the peculiarities of the little fellows, 

 unknown with other genera of the bee family. 

 All bees, of which there is said to be fully 

 fifteen hundred species including the hive, or 

 domestic bees, eat or depend exclusively upon 

 vegetable food in some form, while members 

 of the wasp family may feed on both vege- 

 table and animal matter. With bees their 

 food is ordinarily in the form of pollen and 

 the nectar extracted from flowers. The pollen 

 that is gathered for the use of the nestlings 

 is carried on a certain part of the posterior 

 pair of legs by some kinds of bees, under the 

 abdomen, and on the thorax behind the wing? 

 by other species. The nectar, converted into 

 honey, gathered for the same purpose, the 

 surplus of which finds its way as a dainty 

 dish on man's breakfast table, is swallowed by 

 the bee. According to David Sharp the necta.r 

 passes down the throat of the bees as far as the 

 crop of its alimentary canal, into what is 

 called the honey sack, and at the hive, or 

 nest, is regurgitated. In the process the 

 nectar of the flower is converted into honey, 

 supposedly by the contribution by the bee of 

 some glandular secretion. The male fbees 

 carry no pollen. 



The young of the social bees are raised 

 in the abode of the parents and are fed after 

 the manner of baby birds by the workers of 

 the hive, or nest, but with the solitary bee the 

 parents and young never see each other. The 

 female, according to the species of which she 

 is a member, finds, or makes, a suitable place 

 to construct a nest. It may be a crevice in 

 the rocks, or a hole excavated in wood, the 



earth, or the hollow of some pithy stem 

 growth. In such a place she makes a cell, 

 stores it with pollen and honey, lays an egg 

 on the food, after which she closes up the 

 cell, then completes a few more cells in the 

 same way, one on top of the other. When 

 this undertaking is finished the mother bee, 

 except in the case of the little carpenter bee, 

 shows no more interest in the nest or its 

 occupants. 



A most wonderful provision of nature for 

 preventing the fouling of the food of the 

 young bee 'by faecal matter while it is in 

 the larval stage and confined in the cell is 

 that the posterior part of the alimentary 

 canal does not connect with the stomach until 

 the larva is about ready to pupate. 



The near relatives of the bee family, the 

 wasps, were still in their winter retreats, with 

 very few exceptions. The wasp must have 

 warm weather. While the days were warm 

 the nights still bore a frosty air. Now and 

 then a representative of the Polistes could be 

 seen flying around in search of material with 

 which to build a nest, or for food to supply 

 its needs following a winter's fasting. These 

 are the slender black and yellow marked 

 wasps that build open inverted nests under 

 house eaves, sheds, rocks, etc., and catch 

 various kinds of insects which they masticate 

 and feed their young. Four or five speci- 

 mens of a species of the Sphecidae family 

 were seen on the warmest days flying up and 

 down the road with occasional excursions into 

 the grass bordering the roadway. This wasp 

 when nesting digs a hole in the ground in 

 which it places a grasshopper for food to 

 supply the larva from a single egg when 

 hatched. It is a very interesting sight to 

 watch the operations of these wasps engaged 

 in making the nest and stocking it with food. 

 In another chapter I have given the details 

 of the intelligent actions of some of the 

 wasps while occupied in this work which I 

 had the good fortune to observe on two or 

 three previous occasions. At Deerwood, how- 

 ever, the Sphex had not yet commenced the 

 serious work of their lives. I spent much 

 time following their flights and their actions 

 when on the ground, but so far as I could dis- 

 cover the wasps had no particular object In 

 view other than to enjoy the warm sunshine. 

 I had hoped to witness their actions in cap- 

 turing a grasshopper, which usually is much 

 larger than themselves. The grasshoppers 

 were about but their presence was ignored 

 by the wasps. The summer and fall in which 

 to work was yet before them, and as the 

 making of a nest and stocking and closing it 

 up after laying the egg is the work of only a 

 few hours or days at the most, they probably 

 reasoned that there was an abundance of time 

 ahead in which to perform the hard work 

 nature demanded of them, and until it was 

 time to begin work they would pass their 

 days in ease — as I saw them. How many 

 nests one of these wasps constructs in the 

 course of a season no one seems to have yet 

 discovered. It must be quite a number, 

 otherwise the species would not persist, for the 

 nests are subject to destruction by reason of 



