Bramble-Bees and Others, page 89 by Jean Henri Fabre
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hophora and sent to me from Carpentras by my dear friend and pupil M. Devillario. I examined them conscientiously in the quiet of my study. I found the Osmia's cocoons arranged in short series, in very irregular passages, the original work of which is due to the Anthophora. Touched up afterwards, made larger or smaller, lengthened or shortened, intersected with a network of crossings by the numerous generations that had succeeded one another in the same city, they formed an inextricable labyrinth.
Sometimes these corridors did not communicate with any adjoining apartment; sometimes they gave access to the spacious chamber of the Anthophora, which could be recognized, in spite of its age, by its oval shape and its coating of glazed stucco. In the latter case, the bottom cell, which once constituted, by itself, the chamber of the Anthophora, was always occupied by a female Osmia. Beyond it, in the narrow corridor, a male was lodged, not seldom two, or even three. Of course, clay partitions, the work of the Osmia, separated the different inhabitants, each of whom had his own storey, his own closed cell.
When the accommodation consisted of no more than a simple cylinder, with no state-bedroom at the end of it--a bedroom always reserved for a female--the contents varied with the diameter of the cylinder. The series, of which the longest were series of four, included, with a wider diameter, first one or two females, then one or two males. It also happened, though rarely, that the series was reversed, that is to say, it began with males and ended with females. Lastly, there were a good many isolated cocoons, of one sex or the other. When the cocoon was alone and occupied the Anthophora's cell, it invariably belonged to a female.
I have observed the same thing in the nests of the Mason-bee of the Sheds, but not so easily. The series are shorter here, because the Mason-bee does not bore galleries but builds cell upon cell. The work of the whole swarm thus forms a stratum of cells that grows thicker fr