72 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



USING 



STING 



Phntc.jjnii.h 

 PARALYZES 



lul Henri Fabre 

 ITS PREY 



The May beetle larva, too large to be carried away, is scientifically immobilized and left in 

 its tracks with an egg of the wasp iScolia) attached to its body. Upon hatching, the grub will find 

 itself in the midst of an ample food supply. Thousands of wasps have been imported recently 

 from Chosen (Korea) to combat the Japanese beetle by laying their eggs in its larvae. 



guard is a male, or a lone female, it imme- 

 diately turns around and ei^'ectively blocks 

 the entrance with its abdomen (Plate VII, 

 upper right). 



When a velvet ant gains entrance to a 

 burrow it lays its eggs in the cells and its 

 offspring feed on the young bees. 



Various kinds of digger wasps catch and 

 kill the mother bees themselves and store 

 them away beneath the ground to serve as 

 food for their young. In my little colony 

 there are two burrows of one kind of these 

 bee-catching wasps (PhUanthus gibbosus, 

 Color Plate VII, top, lower right), 



KILLERS SHOW A CERTAIN DELICACY 



Although these wasps are storing their 

 cells with the dead bodies of my little 

 friends right in their own village, they sht)W 

 a certain amount of delicacy in their mur- 

 derous work. For they never trouble the 

 bees on their nesting ground, but fly some 

 distance away and catch them on my neigh- 

 bors' flowers. 



About these bee colonies you will notice 

 tachinid flies (Metopia leucoccphala, Plate 

 VII, top, upper left) watching for an 

 opportunity to lay their eggs in the bees' 

 burrows. Their young live within the 

 bodies of the baby bees. 



Dancing about the bees as they return 



laden with pollen you see much smaller 

 phorid flies {Megaselia diver gens, Color 

 Plate VII, upper, right center). They also 

 live at the bees' expense, as do others, in- 

 cluding minute slender wasps (Loxoiropa, 

 sp., Plate VII, top, lower left), canny, 

 crafty things that sneak past the guard. 



The burrowing bees are not the only ones 

 victimized by other bees that have learned 

 the art of living at someone else's expense. 

 Among the commonest of these robbers are 

 the usurper bees, which prey upon their 

 closest relative, the bumblebee. 



A female usurper bee makes her way into 

 a colony of buinblebees, cows the queen 

 into submission or kills her, and then coaxes, 

 or forces, the workers to raise her young. 

 The young are all males or fertile females, 

 as usurper bees have no workers. 



The low ethical standards of the usurper 

 bees are not infrequently approached by 

 certain young queen bumblebees that appear 

 late in the season and forcibly adopt an 

 elderly queen's household. 



The scandalous conduct of these racket- 

 eer bees and of the few corresponding gang- 

 ster wasps is not a pretty thing to contem- 

 plate. But they form an important part of 

 the picture of bee and wasp hfe as a whole. 

 Besides, if it were not for them there might 

 be too many wasps and bees. 



