10 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



y/' 



structed of bricks laid up, not with lime mortar, 

 but tempered clay, I observed many clay tubes 

 projecting (as shown in Fig. 5, 6) , from the joints 

 of the brick work. I had not looked at them 

 long, before one of these Mason bees flew into 

 one of the tubes, and disappeared in the hole it 

 had constructed between the bricks. Watching 

 my opportunity, as a second and a third bee 

 performed the same process, I seized them, tube 

 and all, in my pocket handkerchief, and soon 

 had them safely pinned in my collecting-box. 

 Having many years ago taken plenty of the 

 same species in Central Illinois (where, how- 

 ever, they bored then- holes, not in brick-work, 

 but in the face of a precipitous clay bank, and 

 where, by the way, I had not observed them to 

 constiTict any clay tubes), I was not anxious to 

 capture additional specimens of the insect itself, 

 but contented myself with securing two perfect 

 and unbroken specimens of their curious ma- 

 sonry, from one of which the illustration given 

 above has been drawn. 



As in the case of all nest-building- solitary 

 Bees, including the Carpenter bees, the Mason 

 bee, after she has constructed her nest, pro- 

 visions it with a sufficient supply of honey and 

 pollen, and then having laid an e.gg thereon, 

 closes the nest up. On the otlier hand, all the 

 solitary wasps provision their nests, not with 

 honey and pollen, but with one or more living 

 insects ; as we saw just now was done by the 

 gigantic digger wasp that preys on locusts, and 

 by the common mud wasp. In both groups of in- 

 sects, the young larva that hatches out from the 

 egg attains maturity within the nest, feeding ex- 

 clusively upon the stores of food laid up for it 

 with such provident care by its mother ; and in 

 the following year it comes forth a perfect bee 

 or a perfect wasp, belonging to the same species 

 as the mother that produced it. 



It may be added that, of all the species of 

 Mason bees found in the old world, but a single 

 one {Anthophora parietina, Latreille) is record- 

 ed by authors as building these singular clay 

 tubes at the mouth of its hole ; while, in addi- 

 tion to the species mentioned above, a second 

 North American species {Anthophora taurea, 

 Say) has been described by our gi-eat Pennsyl- 

 vaniau entomologist, Thomas Say, as practising 

 this i-emarkable style of architecture.* European 

 authors have observed the fact, that both their 

 tube-building Mason bee and their tube-build- 

 ing Mason wasp moisten from their mouths the 



»See Say's Works, II, up. 785, 6. On the habits of the 

 Europeau Mason bee and the European Mason wasp, see St 

 Fargean's Hymen, II. pp. 24—5; p. 79; and H. pp.649— 552; 



earth wherein they propose to excavate a hole, 

 and then working up the moistened matter into 

 a pellet, proceed to employ it in the constrac- 

 tion of the tube. In every case, the exterior of 

 the tube is always rough and uneven, so that 

 the eye can distinguish at once where each 

 pellet has been stuck on to that wliich precedes 

 it ; but the interior is sufficiently smoothed for 

 the convenient passage of the bee or wasp. As 

 is almost universally the case with insects, it is 

 only the female Mason bee that labors, the 

 males, as with the Red Indians, being idle 

 gentlemen, who think it beneath their dignity 

 to work, and spend their time partly in sipping 

 honey and pollen, and partly in gallanting the 

 ladies. 



The curious reader may perhaps inquire : " Of 

 what possible use can this clay tube be to the 

 female Mason bee, constructed as it is with great 

 pains and art upon one day, only to be torn to 

 pieces and used in filling up tlie hole upon the 

 next day?" The answer is obvious enough to 

 every entomologist. There are hosts of insects, 

 some of them Beetles (Clerus family), some of 

 them four-winged flies (Ichneumon and Chryds 

 families), which are parasitic upon the larva of 

 the Mason bee, and are always lying in wait to 

 enter its nest and deposit an egg therein. When 

 once this is eflfected, the future larva of the poor 

 Mason bee is doomed. It will hatch out and 

 attain a certain size, but then, alas ! the ferocious 

 parasite is disclosed from its egg, and seizing 

 upon the soft and helpless larva, gradually and 

 slowly eats out its vitals. There is also a small 

 group of solitary bees, which not being them- 

 selves provided by nature with the organs 

 proper for collecting pollen, sneak into the nests 

 of pollen-collecting bees, and lay their eggs upon 

 the pollen stored up therein by the industrious 

 builder of the nest, thus appropriating to their 

 own future offspring the food that had been pre- 

 pared with great labor for the ofl"spring of 

 another. These last may be conveniently 

 called " Guest bees," though by some authors 

 they have been somewhat ambiguously denom- 

 inated " Cuckoo bees." What is a very curious 

 fact, to every genus of " Guest bees," there is 

 assigned one or more peculiar genera of pollen- 

 collecting bees for its prey;* and the unfortun- 

 ate Mason bees, of which we have been talking, 

 are not left without an appropriate genus of 

 unbidden Guests, to enter their houses on the 



* Thus the genus Epeolus preys upon CoUetes ; the genus V' 

 Nomacla upon Halictus and Andrena; the gemisCalwxys upon 

 MegachUea,Ti&Sarropoda;Xl\e gQnns Sfe/js upon Osmta; and 

 the genus Melecta, of which we have but a single d,esoribed 

 N. A. species, upon the very genus Anthophora, refeiTed to 

 in the text. (Fred. Smith.) 



