Ecological and Behavior Notes 35 



yellow corolla of a pumpkin blossom where its high de- 

 gree of protective coloration made it invisible to me; I 

 captured the bee with the forceps, and was surprised to 

 pull out the spider clinging to it. 



Anthophora ahrupta Say. [J. C. Crawford]. A num- 

 ber of mud cells containing larvae of this species were 

 unearthed at the base of a tree at Creve Coeur Lake on 

 Jan. 15, 1910. A number of these were parasitized by the 

 Chalcid wasp, Monodontomerus montivagus [J. C. Craw- 

 ford] which emerged between the 10th and 15th of the 

 following May. The great preponderance of female 

 parasites that emerged led me to tabulate the count of 

 ten cells. The figures showed a large predominance of 

 females in every cell; out of the 218 insects in the ten 

 cells, the males numbered 31 and the females 187. The 

 number of these parasites supported by a single bee 

 varied from 13 to 29. Some of these lived up to 22 days 

 in confinement, probably feeding on the sugar water 

 in their cage. In another lot of cells, taken from Cliff 

 Cave during the winter of 1915-16, the adult bees 

 emerged between May 8th and 12th. None of these were 

 parasitized by the Chalcids, but by about a dozen speci- 

 mens of a Dipterous insect, Mycophaga sp. (identified by 

 C. H. T. Townsend, who writes that **this genus has not 

 been recorded for America.") 



These burrowing, turret-building bees were at work 

 in the disintegrating mortar of an old stone chimney at 

 Manchester, Mo. None of the turrets of the last year*8 

 group had survived the \sdnter weather, but I kept close 

 and frequent watch on the chimney because of other in- 

 sects which I was studj^ng there. The chimney was ex- 

 amined on June 3, 1919, and no A. ahrupta were there. 

 The next visit, June 7, revealed an abundance of these 

 bees, and since their numbers never increased I concluded 

 that the entire population emerged simultaneously. By 

 Julv 5 thev had so decreased in numbers that onlv about 



