More Hunting Wasps

by Jean-Henri Fabre

When the ravisher makes play with her sting, the Bee does the same with hers and furiously. I see the needle now moving this way or that way in space, now slipping, violently curved, along the murderess' convex surface. These sword-thrusts have no serious results. The manner in which the two combatants are at grips has this effect, that the Philanthus' abdomen is inside and the Bee's outside. The latter's sting therefore finds under its point only the dorsal surface of the foe, a convex, slippery surface and so well armoured as to be almost invulnerable. There is here no breach into which the weapon can slip by accident; and so the operation is conducted with absolute surgical safety, notwithstanding the indignant protests of the patient.

After the fatal stroke has been administered, the murderess remains for a long time belly to belly with the dead, for reasons which we shall shortly perceive. There may now be some danger for the Philanthus. The attitude of attack and defence is abandoned; and the ventral surface, more vulnerable than the other, is within reach of the sting. Now the deceased still retains the reflex use of her weapon for a few minutes, as I learnt to my cost. Having taken the Bee too early from the bandit and handling her without suspecting any risk, I received a most downright sting. Then how does the Philanthus, in her long contact with the butchered Bee, manage to protect herself against that lancet, which is bent upon avenging the murder? Is there any chance of a commutation of the death-penalty? Can an accident ever happen in the Bee's favour? Perhaps.

One incident strengthens my faith in this perhaps. I had placed four Bees and as many Eristales under the bell-glass at the same time, with the object of estimating the Philanthus' entomological knowledge in the matter of the distinction of species. Reciprocal quarrels break out in the mixed colony. Suddenly, in the midst of the fray, the killer is killed. She tumbles over on her back, she waves her legs; she is dead. Who struck the blow? It was certainly not the excitable but pacific Drone-fly; it was one of the Bees, who struck home by accident during the thick of the fight. Where and how? I cannot tell. The incident occurs only once in my notes, but it throws a light upon the question. The Bee is capable of withstanding her adversary; she can then and there slay her would-be slayer with a thrust of the sting. That she does not defend herself to better purpose, when she falls into her enemy's clutches, is due to her ignorance of fencing and not to the weakness of her weapon. And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question which I asked above: how is it that the Philanthus has learnt for offensive what the Bee has not learnt for defensive purposes? I see but one answer to the difficulty: the one knows without having learnt; the other does not know because she is incapable of learning.

Let us now consider the motives that induce the Philanthus to kill her Bee instead of paralysing her. When the crime has been perpetrated, she manipulates her dead victim without letting go of it for a moment, holding its belly pressed against her own six legs. I see her recklessly, very recklessly, rooting with her mandibles in the articulation of the neck, sometimes also in the larger articulation of the corselet, behind the first pair of legs, an articulation of whose delicate membrane she is perfectly well aware, even though, when using her sting, she did not take advantage of this point, which is the most readily accessible of all. I see her rough-handling the Bee's belly, squeezing it against her own abdomen, crushing it in the press. The recklessness of the treatment is striking; it shows that there is no need for keeping up precautions. The Bee is a corpse; and a little hustling here and there will not deteriorate its quality, provided there be no effusion of blood. In point of fact, however rough the handling, I fail to discover the slightest wound.

These various manipulations, especially the squeezing of the neck, at once bring about the desired results: the honey in the crop mounts to the Bee's throat. I see the tiny drops spurt out, lapped up by the glutton as soon as they appear. The bandit greedily, over and over again, takes the dead insect's lolling, sugared tongue into her mouth; then she once more digs into the neck and thorax, subjecting the honey-bag to the renewed pressure of her abdomen. The syrup comes and is instantly lapped up and lapped up again. In this way the contents of the crop are exhausted in small mouthfuls, yielded one at a time. This odious meal at the expense of a corpse's stomach is taken in a sybaritic attitude; the Philanthus lies on her side with the Bee between her legs. The atrocious banquet sometimes lasts for half an hour or longer. At last the drained Bee is discarded, not without regret, it seems, for from time to time I see the manipulation renewed. After taking a turn round the top of the bell-jar, the robber of the dead returns to her prey and squeezes it, licking its mouth until the last trace of honey has disappeared.

This frenzied passion of the Philanthus for the Bee's syrup is declared in yet another fashion. When the first victim has been sucked dry, I slip under the glass a second victim, which is promptly stabbed under the chin and then subjected to pressure to extract the honey. A third follows and undergoes the same fate without satisfying the bandit. I offer a fourth and a fifth. They are all accepted. My notes mention one Philanthus who in front of my eyes sacrificed six Bees in succession and squeezed out their crops in the regulation manner. The slaughter came to an end not because the glutton was sated but because my functions as a purveyor were becoming rather difficult: the dry month of August causes the insects to avoid my harmas, which at this season is denuded of flowers. Six crops emptied of their honey: what an orgy! And even then the ravenous creature would very likely not have scorned a copious additional course, had I possessed the means of supplying it!

There is no reason to regret this break in the service; the little that I have said is more than enough to prove the singular characteristics of the Bee-slayer. I am far from denying that the Philanthus has an honest means of earning her livelihood; I find her working on the flowers as assiduously as the other Wasps, peacefully drawing her honeyed beakers. The males even, possessing no lancet, know no other manner of refreshment. The mothers, without neglecting the table d'hote of the flowers, support themselves by brigandage as well. We are told of the Skua, that pirate of the seas, that he swoops down upon the fishing birds, at the moment when they rise from the water with a capture. With a blow of the beak delivered in the pit of the stomach he makes them give up their prey, which is caught by the robber in mid-air. The despoiled bird at least gets off with nothing worse than a contusion at the base of the throat. The Philanthus, a less scrupulous pirate, pounces on the Bee, stabs her to death and makes her disgorge in order to feed upon her honey.

I say feed and I do not withdraw the word. To support my statement I have better reasons than those set forth above. In the cages in which various Hunting Wasps, whose stratagems of war I am engaged in studying, are waiting till I have procured the desired prey—not always an easy thing—I have planted a few flower-spikes, a thistle-head or two, on which are placed drops of honey renewed at need. Here my captives come to take their meals. With the Philanthus, the provision of honeyed flowers, though favourably received, is not indispensable. I have only to let a few live Bees into her cage from time to time. Half a dozen a day is about the proper allowance. With no other food than the syrup extracted from the slain, I keep my insects going for a fortnight or three weeks.

It is as plain as a pikestaff: outside my cages, when the opportunity offers, the Philanthus must also kill the Bee on her own account. The Odynerus asks nothing from the Chrysomela but a mere condiment, the aromatic juice of the rump; the other extracts from her victim an ample supplement to her victuals, the crop full of honey. What a hecatomb of Bees must not a colony of these freebooters make for their personal consumption, not to mention the stored provisions! I recommend the Philanthus to the signal vengeance of our Bee-masters.

Let us go no deeper into the first causes of the crime. Let us accept things as we know them for the moment, with their apparent or real atrocity. To feed herself, the Philanthus levies tribute on the Bee's crop. Having made sure of this, let us consider the bandit's method more closely. She does not paralyse her capture according to the rites customary among the Hunting Wasps; she kills it. Why kill it? If the eyes of our understanding be not closed, the need for sudden death is clear as daylight. The Philanthus proposes to obtain the honeyed broth without ripping up the Bee, a proceeding which would damage the game when it is hunted on behalf of the larvae, without resorting to the murderous extirpation of the crop. She must, by able handling, by skilful pressure, make the Bee disgorge, she must milk her, in a manner of speaking. Suppose the Bee stung behind the corselet and paralysed. That deprives her of her power of locomotion, but not of her vitality. The digestive organs in particular retain or very nearly retain their normal energy, as is proved by the frequent excretions that take place in the paralysed prey, so long as the intestine is not empty, as is proved above all by the victims of the Languedocian Sphex (Cf. "The Hunting Wasp": chapters 8 to 10.—Translator's Note.), those helpless creatures which I used to keep alive for forty days on end with a soup consisting of sugar and water. It is absurd to hope, without therapeutic means, without a special emetic, to coax a sound stomach into emptying its contents. The stomach of the Bee, who is jealous of her treasure, would lend itself to the process even less readily than another. When paralysed, the insect is inert; but there are always internal energies and organic forces which will not yield to the manipulator's pressure. The Philanthus will nibble at the throat and squeeze the sides in vain: the honey will not rise to the mouth so long as a vestige of life keeps the crop closed.