100 
Psyche 
[June 
THE NESTING HABITS OF THE PULP-MAKING BEE, 
ALCIDAMEA PRODUCT A CRESS \ 
By Phil Rau, 
Kirkwood, Missouri. 
It really seems sometimes that the various types of twig- 
dwellers and mud-dwellers among bees and wasps vie with 
one another to see which can produce a new or novel type 
of architecture, for certainly they have utilized almost as many 
different forms and materials in accomplishing their one su- 
premely important task, i. e. providing shelters for their broods, 
as man has done in precisely the same task. Man has, up to 
the present time, constructed his domiciles chiefly of caves or 
excavations, structures of mud, modifications of mud and clay, 
cement, stone, wood, thatch and, to some extent, paper. So 
far in our studies of the architecture of our smaller fellow- 
creatures, we have accounts of their using natural crevices or 
caverns, excavations, various structures of mud, wax, thatch 
(grass-carrier), wood (pith-borers and carpenters), and to a 
large extent paper, and we may add to that list modifications 
of clay. A. producta, in nesting in hollow stems, uses vegetable 
matter in a very unusual way; she chews green leaves into 
soft pulp, and while this is still wet she fashions it into plugs 
and partitions that make cells for the young. 
Grsenicher, who has made observations on this bee says, 
“From Davidson’s descriptions of the nest, we learn that the 
Californian Alcidamea producta builds its nests in the stems of 
the elder tree by excavating the broken twigs and constructing 
of pith and clay the partitions between the cells, as also those 
near the opening of the nest (the ‘outer defense/ as Davidson 
calls them). In our region this bee makes the partitions out of 
pieces of chewed leaves, and never uses clay for this purpose. 
In this variation of habits, Alcidamea producta remains true to 
the habits in vogue within the family to which it belongs, since 
^ndentified by T. D. A. Cockerell. 
