BEING A MASON-BEE FOR A LITTLE WHILE
Now, just to show you one more thing about Mrs. Mason-Bee as a house-builder—how clever she is—let's try something right here. Let's suppose ourselves—yourself and myself—Mrs. Mason-Bees. We have got a home to build for some baby mason-bees that will be along by and by. Say we already know that we must use this stone dust of the roadway, and that we must make our mortar not with water but with saliva. Here's the next problem:
Shall the mixing be done where the building is going up over there? That's the way human masons do it. But Mrs. Mason-Bee evidently thinks otherwise, for at the very time she is prying up those atoms of dust with so much energy, you notice she is doing her mixing. She rolls and kneads her mortar until she has it in the shape of a ball as big as she can possibly carry. Then "buz-z-z-z!" Away she goes, straight as an arrow, back home, and the mortar is spread where it is needed.
You see, after all, this is the best way. If she didn't turn the dust into mortar before she started, so a good-sized lump of it would stick together, she couldn't carry much of it at a time, and it would be forever and a day before she could get her house built. As it is, the pellets she carries are of the size of small shot; a pretty big load, let me tell you, for a little body no bigger than Mrs. Mason-Bee.
And remember, this goes on all day long from sunrise to sunset. Without a moment's rest, she adds her pellets to the growing walls and then back she goes to the precise spot where she has found the building material that best suits her needs.
In building a nest, the mason-bee, in going to and fro, day after day, travels, on the average, about 275 miles; half the distance across the widest part of France. All in about five or six weeks, she does this. Then her work is over. She retires to some quiet place under the stones, and dies. As I said, she never sees the babies she has done so much for.
SURFACE MOUNDS OF THE MASON-ANT
There are mason-ants as well as mason-bees. This illustration shows the works thrown up by some mason-ants that Dr. McCook found in a garden path one morning in May.