156 
Psyche 
[September 
The clay bank (fig. 2) at which these bees (figs. 5, 6 and 
7) were nesting, faced the east, where it received the morn- 
ing sun, and was protected from the weather by the porch 
above it. 
The Turret-building Bee, Anthophora abrupta. 
Anthophora abrupta makes no secret of its presence. 
They are neither timid nor aggressive, but they certainly 
are self-reliant. Their presence is easily and quickly de- 
tected by two prominent indicators, the bees themselves, 
and the conspicuous nests which they build. A glance at the 
picture (fig. 5) will convey to the reader some idea of how 
conspicuous they are as they noisily swing their ponderous 
bodies to and fro on the wing, arrive home and scramble into 
their burrows or come tumbling out headlong and dash off 
into the sunny fields, with all the exuberance of boys just 
out of school. They have none of the shy, stealthy ways of 
maneuvering, whereby some of the smaller and daintier 
varieties of bees and wasps hold their own in a competitive 
world. They go boldly and fearlessly about their work, and 
soon construct nests which are likewise prominent. While 
many species of solitary wasps and bees try in some way to 
conceal the location of their burrows, these construct large 
mud chimneys over their nests, made from the clay dug out 
of the burrows (fig. 1). Since they work in colonies, or 
more correctly remain to build on the site where they were 
born, the result is a very conspicuous village, sometimes a 
very crowded and busy town of these masonry turrets as 
shown in profile in fig. 8. At a busy season when many of 
these huge bees are bustling about with very audible hum 
and zip, the entire village with its many wonderful towers 
and industrious citizens form a spectacle which is in itself 
quite capable of overawing any but the most unemotional 
individual. 
In 1917 the Anthophora abrupta first appeared on June 
25th. In 1918, the spring was warmer and they were out 
and at work much earlier, and the size of the chimneys in- 
dicated that they must already have been at work some days 
before I discovered them on May 28th. 
