44 INSECT ARCHITECTURE 



there was a ball of bright yellow pollen, as round as 

 a garden pea, and rather larger, upon which a small 

 white grub was feeding ; and to which the mother 

 bee had been adding, as she had just entered a minute 

 before with her thighs loaded with pollen. That it 

 was not the male, the load of pollen determined ; for 

 the male has no apparatus for collecting or trans- 

 porting it. The whole labour of digging the nest 

 and providing food for the young is performed by 

 the female. The females of the solitary bees have 

 no assistance in their tasks. The males are idle ; and 

 the females are unprovided with labourers, such as 

 the queens of the hive command. 



Reaumur mentions that the bees of this sort, whose 

 operations he had observed, piled up at the entrance 

 of their galleries the earth which they had scooped 

 out from the interior , and when the grub was hatched, 

 and properly provided with food, the earth was again 

 employed to close up the passage, in order to prevent 

 the intrusion oi ants, ichneumon flies, or other de- 

 predators. In those which we have observed, this 

 was not the case ; but every species differs from 

 another in some little peculiarity, though they agree 

 in the general principles of their operations. 



