The importance of the males! Could there be a weaker argument against woman’s suffrage than the one which has been brought forward that throughout nature the duty and the right of protection rests with the male? Perhaps the drones do fight among themselves; but, as in most other fighting of the males, it is not to protect the nest or young from perishing, but merely to determine which one of them shall win the queen’s attention. The males are stingless.
In this world of the clover field all the work of the society is done by the queen herself, or by the workers, which are infertile females. Apparently few males are wanted in the colony until late in the season, when, for a brief period, they are tolerated in considerable numbers as the necessary courtiers who accompany the young queens of late summer in their marriage flight. This takes place before the winter comes to kill all but a few fortunate queens, which find safe shelter in some crevice in the rocks or underneath some old, decaying log.
SOLITARY LEAF-CUTTING BEE
(Megachile brevis, Say)
Unlike the social honey and bumble-bees, this bee leads a solitary life.
With her strong, saw-like jaws, the female makes her burrow in soft wood and lines it with bits of leaf which she has cut from some plant. When the leaves of plants in the garden have large round holes in them, in nine cases out of ten you may be sure that they have been cut by some solitary bee.
When the burrow is complete she makes a ball of pollen and nectar, puts it in the bottom of the burrow, lays an egg upon it, and, with a wad of leaves, securely shuts it in; over this she lays down another food ball with its corresponding egg, and so on, until the burrow is full.