Inmates of my House and Garden

OSMIA

(SWEET SCENT OR PERFUME.)

This genus is so called because some species are said to throw out a sweet odour when they are touched.

There are about ten species of these bees in England, and we must look very carefully if we wish to find their nests.

One kind of Osmia will scoop out the pith from a piece of bramble-stem and make cells in it composed of minced-up bits of wood or leaves. Another kind will choose an empty snail-shell and fill it up most cleverly with little cells to hold her eggs. A third species of Osmia thinks a keyhole is a most suitable place for her nursery, and will so fill it up with plastered earth, eggs and pollen, that the lock is rendered perfectly useless.

HALICTUS

(TO CROWD TOGETHER.)

This curious bee prefers to work after the sun has gone down, especially on moonlight nights. Like the Colletes, it is fond of building in colonies.

They burrow into the ground about eight inches, working in such crowds that it is difficult to avoid treading upon them. They seem able to manage with very little rest, for after all this night-work they are equally diligent in the daytime collecting pollen in which they lay their eggs at the bottom of the tunnels. These bees have very beautiful wings, rich with all the colours of the rainbow, but, as they are not very large, a magnifying glass is needed to enable one to see these colours to advantage.

One of this species is the smallest bee in England; it would almost be taken for a house-fly, but for its long antennæ. The most beautiful specimens may often be found upon the flowers of the chickweed.

ANDRÆNA

There are seventy species of this bee, and their habits are much the same as the other bees I have mentioned, but this genus is the victim of a most strange enemy – a small winged beetle called Stylops.

The grub or larva of the Stylops is found in dandelion flowers, and when the bees come seeking honey these little creatures climb on to the bee, and, worse than that, they creep into its body, and there they live and grow, feeding on the inside organs of the bee until they are fully grown, when they turn into chrysalides.

Kirby, the great naturalist, was, I believe, the discoverer of this wicked little insect. He saw a small lump on the under side of an Andræna bee, and on taking it off with a pin he found to his surprise a queer insect with milk-white wings and two staring black eyes peering out of this lump – and this was the perfect Stylops, hatched from the body of the poor bee, which, strange to say, was not killed by the parasite, but appeared to suffer pain and irritation when the Stylops came out between the joints of its body. It seems as if almost every bee and wasp has a special enemy created to persecute it. We may sometimes see upon our window-sills in summer a very brilliant little creature called the Ruby-tailed fly. When the sun shines upon it, it looks like an emerald suspended from a bright polished ruby with a pair of wings, so brilliant is its metallic colouring. There are five species of this insect, and they all prey upon mason bees and wasps, creeping into their cells and laying their own eggs with those of the wasp or bee, which are of course destroyed by the grub of this cruel intruder.

A French naturalist writes that he saw a Ruby-tail fly go into a Solitary bee’s nest in a hole in a wall, and when the bee came back she found the Ruby-tail, and had a desperate fight with her. The fly is able to roll up into a ball as a hedgehog does, but this did not save her, for the bee sawed off her wings, and, dragging her out of the nest, threw her on the ground, and went off to get some more pollen. Poor Ruby-tail was not going to be beaten; she climbed slowly up the wall into the bee’s hole, and there she succeeded in laying her eggs before the rightful owner returned, so after all the bee’s family were not saved by the mother’s brave defence of her nest.

The Cuckoo fly is another species that victimises bees and wasps in the same way, and the large tribe of ichneumon-flies are always on the watch to lay their eggs in any living things that will suit their purpose. They possess a long, flexible tube called an ovipositor, and by means of this they can insert their eggs inside wasp and bees’ eggs, and even into chrysalids and live caterpillars the cruel fly will drive this tube, and leave her eggs where they will hatch, and live until they are full grown, feeding on the living substance. I have sometimes kept caterpillars hoping they would turn into beautiful butterflies, and instead of that I have only had a crop of ichneumon-flies because their eggs, unknown to me, had been previously laid in the bodies of the unfortunate caterpillars. You may always know an ichneumon-fly by its quivering antennæ; they are never still for a moment while daylight lasts, and the fly itself may also be known by its long, slender body with a hairlike waist. Some of the species are so minute that they lay several of their eggs within a butterfly’s egg, and it affords quite enough food for the ichneumon-grubs until they are full grown.

Others again are large insects with such a long and powerful tube that they can pierce through solid wood in order to reach the concealed grub in which they desire to lay their eggs. I believe the largest of the species measures four inches from head to tail, the ovipositor being an inch and three-quarters long. While I am speaking of parasites I may mention the clever way in which a humble-bee will sometimes rid itself of a species of mite which one may see swarming on its body. I give this on the authority of Rev. Mr. Gordon, of Harting. He says that the bee seeks an anthill on which it throws itself on its back, and sets up a loud buzzing noise; the ants soon take the alarm, swarm out of their nest, and at once fall upon the bee; but the latter simulates death, stretching out its limbs rigid and motionless; the ants therefore leave it alone, and seizing the mites which are running over its body, they soon dispatch them all, when the bee gets up, gives itself a shake, and flies away happily relieved of all its tormentors.

WASPS

I will now touch upon the habits of a few of the Solitary wasps.

It happens that my house is a favourite nesting-place for them. Some years ago I noticed small cells made of grey mud placed in some of the angles of the brickwork close to our drawing-room window, and seeing that some were like little pockets half open, and others closed up, I was led to watch and see what was going on.

A slender kind of wasp, a species of Odynerus, marked with black and yellow stripes, came with materials in her mouth, and began working on some of these mud cells against the wall; she kept on, hard at work all day at her masonry.

At last I thought I would open one of the finished cells and see what was inside, so with a fine penknife I broke away part of the cell wall, and there I found a number of greyish green caterpillars half killed and unable to move. Down at the bottom of the cell was the wasp’s egg, and the instinct of the mother insect leads her to obtain these caterpillars, and in order that they may be in fit condition for the grub when it hatches out of the egg, she gives each of the caterpillars a bite which paralyses it but does not affect any vital part, so it lives on in a helpless condition, and the wasp grub literally eats its way through the caterpillars till it is full-grown, then it turns to a chrysalis, and after a time it becomes a black and yellow wasp like its mother.

It is curious how tame insects will become if treated kindly. I used to know these little wasps quite well, and if they came into the rooms, and I found them on the window-panes they were quite accustomed to be placed gently outside that they might go on with their nests. A nephew of mine who holds a position in some sugar works at Cossipore in India, tells me in one of his letters that the air in the factory is so filled with wasps and hornets attracted there by the scent of the sugar, that they constantly strike against his face as he walked about. The workpeople and clerks take all kinds of precautions against them, wearing leather leggings over their trousers and beating them off continually; they get frightfully stung and tormented all day long, whilst my nephew, who is fond of all living things, takes no precautions at all, has never injured the insects, and never once had a sting from them. This shows that insects can discriminate between friends and enemies.

In my nephew’s own house some wasps came in and formed a nest in his dining-room on a wall bracket within a foot or two of his usual seat at dinner, and they too were perfectly friendly and would settle on his face and hands, and never think of stinging their friend.

I remember once in a country village seeing a man hard at work thrashing corn in a barn, and quite near to him there was an immense hornet’s nest hanging from a beam. We asked if he was not afraid of them, but he smiled and said, “Oh, they know me well enough; one of ’em fell inside my shirt t’other day, but he was very ceevil and never stung me, for I never interferes wi’ them, so they don’t interfere wi’ me.”

Many years ago a curious thing happened in a friend’s house in Surrey. In a spare bedroom which was not often used, there was a small Pembroke table with two flaps which could be put up or down. The maid had to get the room ready for a visitor, and in dusting the table she lifted up one of the flaps when down fell a quantity of dry earth all full of whitish grubs and chrysalids, and a few young wasps were also crawling about. It was found on examination that a solitary wasp had gained some mode of access to the room, and had made her family nest under the flap of the table, and unless it had been thus happily discovered the room would soon have been full of young wasps, much to the discomfort of the coming visitor.

One of the mason wasps called Odynerus not only makes a tunnel a few inches deep in the ground, generally in sandy banks, but it builds a kind of little tube of grains of sand glued together and places it just over the hole. It curves a little to one side, and is very possibly intended to act as a protection against various flies and parasites that would try to creep down and lay their eggs amongst those of the wasp.

This wasp stores up grey caterpillars for its young as the mason bees do, so we see that they have their use in tending to reduce the number of larvæ which prey upon our vegetables, and should be protected on that account.

An old silver-fir at the Grove, which had become decayed in the centre, became a home for countless thousands of a small species of wasp; they scooped it into endless galleries and cells, and filled them with half-dead bluebottles and other flies to serve as food for their grubs.

I sat and watched them at work for half an hour one day, and saw that about every half-minute a wasp arrived, each one holding some kind of fly in its mandibles; as I imagine this went on from early morning till dusk we may easily reply to the frequent inquiry of, What use can wasps be in the world? and why were such troublesome insects created? by pointing to the useful labours of this despised creature in reducing, not only the destructive grey caterpillars which abound in our gardens, but also the swarms of flies which beset us in the summer months.

We had to take down this great fir-tree, as it was completely decayed and likely to fall with the next high wind, and when it was felled we saw the marvellous work the wasps had been carrying on – the stem was completely honeycombed with wasp-cells and all through that summer endless numbers of wasps continued to hatch out of the old tree-stem.

The mason wasps are a very serious evil in Florida and many other hot countries, because of their tendency to fill up every convenient crevice with their mud nests. For instance, a gun may be laid aside for a day or two without a cover, and a mason wasp will at once fill up the barrel with mud, and when the owner, all unsuspectingly, puts in the cartridge and attempts to fire the gun, it will probably explode, and possibly cause the death of the sportsman. Many a lock is rendered useless, and all kind of domestic troubles are caused by this persevering insect.

I may here say a word about the wasps I have had to deal with in Switzerland. I used often to find their pretty little nests, about the size of a small rose, made of a grey papery material, fixed on various objects, frequently on stones by the roadside, on tree-branches, or on the walls of houses and churches.

I brought one home and placed it in a sunny window of the hotel we were staying at. I had not noticed that the cells were full of young grubs, and one morning we came down to find the room full of lively young wasps which had hatched out of my nest, and we had to set to work and clear them away before we could eat our breakfast in peace. A friend has kindly lent me a somewhat similar nest she found on some heather in England.

I have now spoken of a few of our most common Solitary bees and wasps. There are hundreds of species, so that it is a wide subject and might be indefinitely extended.

If any young people desire to study these curious insects, I may mention a book which will be found very useful for identifying the species: “British Bees,” by W. E. Shuckard, published by Lovell Reeve & Co.

With a magnifying glass one may see the two kinds of eyes with which bees are furnished. The two large eyes with hundreds of facets which we can easily see, are supposed to be for discerning objects near at hand. Then on the top of the bee’s head are three little specks of eyes called “ocelli,” placed in a triangle; these are believed to be for long vision, to enable the bee to guide its flight in the air.

A small lens is an essential thing to carry about with us, revealing a whole world of interest and beauty, which does not come within the range of our ordinary vision.

DRONE-FLIES

“Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum,

To him who muses through the wood at noon;

Or drowsy shepherd as he lies reclin’d,

With half-shut eyes, beneath the floating shade

Of willows gray, close crowding o’er the brook.”

    James Thomson.

DRONE-FLIES

(ERISTALIS TENAX.)

MY compassion has often been stirred in autumn as I watched the number of unhappy drone-flies buzzing on the window-panes, day after day, until they perished from cold and hunger. These flies closely resemble the real drones, which are the males of the honey-bee and have four wings, while these, being flies, have but two.

They are large, handsome insects, with a downy, yellow-brown thorax and shining black body which moves up and down in a wasp-like manner. When flying about the room they keep up a loud humming noise, which at once betrays their presence.

As soon as cold weather begins these flies are driven to seek shelter in our rooms, where they find warmth, but usually no food or welcome. This year I thought I would prepare “a refuge for the destitute,” in the shape of a small glass globe, with sufficient ventilation, a little trough full of honeycomb, and a small pan of water. Into this little home I introduced three of these dipterous “waifs and strays” I found buzzing on the window-panes last October, and I suppose they liked their quarters, for they settled down amicably enough, and spent their whole time, like many beings far higher up in the scale of creation, in eating, drinking, and sleeping! I can speak well of these drone-flies as pet insects, for they become absolutely tame, so as to come on my finger, and to bear being stroked with a soft feather. They cannot sting or bite, as they possess no aggressive weapons of any kind, and having proverbially nothing to do, they are very easy-going, happy little creatures, only asking for sunshine and food to keep themselves in health and contentment.