The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles

by Jean-Henri Fabre

This success emboldens me. I remain permanently in front of the work in progress, continually removing lumps of earth filled with cells, spilling the liquid honey on the ground, eviscerating larvæ and crushing the Bees busily occupied in their nests. All this devastation results merely in arousing a louder hum in the swarm and is not followed by any hostile demonstration. The Anthophoræ whose cells are not hurt go about their labours as if nothing unusual were happening round about them; those whose dwellings are overturned try to repair them, or hover distractedly in front of the ruins; but none of them seems inclined to swoop down upon the author of the damage. At most, a few, more irritated than the rest, come at intervals and hover before my face, confronting me at a distance of a couple of inches, and then fly away, after a few moments of this curious inspection.

Despite the selection of a common site for their nests, which might suggest an attempt at communistic interests among the Anthophoræ, these Bees, therefore, obey the egotistical law of each one for himself and do not know how to band themselves together to repel an enemy who threatens one and all. Taken singly, the Anthophora does not even know how to dash at the enemy who is ravaging her cells and drive him away with her stings; the pacific creature hastily leaves its dwelling when disturbed by undermining and escapes in a crippled state, sometimes even mortally wounded, without thinking of making use of its venomous sting, except when it is seized and handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to wreak an individual vengeance.

Thanks to this unexpected lack of spirit in the Mason-bee, I was able for hours to pursue my investigations at my leisure, seated on a stone in the midst of the murmuring and distracted swarm, without receiving a single sting, though I took no precautions whatever. Country-folk, happening to pass and beholding me seated, unperturbed, in the midst of the whirl of Bees, stopped aghast to ask me whether I had bewitched them, whether I charmed them, since I appeared to have nothing to fear from them:

"Mé, moun bel ami, li-z-avé doun escounjurado què vous pougnioun pas, canèu de sort!"

My miscellaneous impedimenta spread over the ground, boxes, glass jars and tubes, tweezers and magnifying-glasses, were certainly regarded by these good people as the implements of my wizardry.

We will now proceed to examine the cells. Some are still open and contain only a more or less complete store of honey. Others are hermetically sealed with an earthen lid. The contents of these latter vary greatly. Sometimes we find the larva of a Bee which has finished its mess or is on the point of finishing it; sometimes a larva, white like the first, but more corpulent and of a different shape; at other times honey with an egg floating on the surface. The honey is liquid and sticky, with a brownish colour and a very strong, repulsive smell. The egg is of a beautiful white, cylindrical in shape, slightly curved into an arc, a fifth or a sixth of an inch in length and not quite a twenty-fifth of an inch in thickness; it is the egg of the Anthophora.

In a few cells this egg is floating all alone on the surface of the honey; in others, very numerous these, we see, lying on the egg of the Anthophora, as on a sort of raft, a young Sitaris-grub with the shape and the dimensions which I have described above, that is to say, with the shape and the dimensions which the creature possesses on leaving the egg. This is the enemy within the gates.

When and how did it get in? In none of the cells where I have observed it was I able to distinguish a fissure which could have allowed it to enter; they are all sealed in a quite irreproachable manner. The parasite therefore established itself in the honey-warehouse before the warehouse was closed; on the other hand, the open cells, full of honey, but as yet without the egg of the Anthophora, are always free from parasites. It is therefore during the laying, or afterwards, when the Anthophora is occupied in plastering the door of the cell, that the young larva gains admittance. It is impossible to decide by experiment to which of these two periods we must ascribe the introduction of the Sitares into the cell; for, however peaceable the Anthophora may be, it is evident that we cannot hope to witness what happens in the cell at the moment when she is laying an egg or at the moment when she is making the lid. But a few attempts will soon convince us that the only second which would allow the Sitaris to establish itself in the home of the Bee is the very second when the egg is laid on the surface of the honey.

Let us take an Anthophora-cell full of honey and furnished with an egg and, after removing the lid, place it in a glass tube with a few Sitaris-grubs. The grubs do not appear at all eager for this wealth of nectar placed within their reach; they wander at random about the tube, run about the outside of the cell, sometimes happen upon the edge of the orifice and very rarely venture inside. When they do, they do not go far in and they come out again at once. If one happens to reach the honey, which only half fills the cell, it tries to escape as soon as it has perceived the shifting nature of the sticky soil upon which it was about to enter; but, tottering at every step, because of the viscous matter clinging to its feet, it often ends by falling back into the honey, where it dies of suffocation.

Again, we may experiment as follows: having prepared a cell as before, we place a larva most carefully on its inner wall, or else on the surface of the food itself. In the first case, the larva hastens to leave the cell; in the second case, it struggles awhile on the surface of the honey and ends by getting so completely caught that, after a thousand efforts to gain the shore, it is swallowed up in the viscous lake.