The victim of the sting of punctatus is killed at once. Life is extinct from the instant that the stroke is given. This is true also of the honey–bee that is the victim of Fabre’s Philanthus apivorus; but the explanation that he gives of the action of his wasp in thus dealing sudden death instead of paralyzing its foe—that the honey must be sucked out of the bee before it can be safely used as food for the larva—does not hold good in our case, since the honey that Halictus carries to mix with the pollen upon which her offspring are fed, is not removed.
[Illustration: NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS
A–B, 3½ inches; B–C, 5 inches; C–D, 14 inches; D–E, 8 inches]
As time went on we found on the island two other Philanthus colonies, although that is rather too large a word to apply to them, since one consisted of four nests and the other of only two. When we came to excavate the nests of this species we were greatly astonished at the length of the gallery, and not until then did we properly appreciate the industry of these little wasps. It is no small undertaking to follow one of their tunnels for twenty–two inches, even when, as in this case, the greater part of it is parallel to the surface of the ground. We did not find distinct pockets, as the soil was very crumbly and fell in as we worked, but we came upon clumps of bees an inch or so to one side of the gallery and about three inches apart, with larvæ in different stages of development. In one nest we found twenty–six bees in two clumps, some of them half–eaten, and some of them fresh, but all quite dead. We have no doubt that punctatus completely provisions one pocket and closes the opening from it into the gallery, before she starts another, making a series of six or eight independent cells. The provision for one larva is probably twelve or fourteen bees, the capture of which, in good weather, would be a fair day’s work.
That the males do not always stay on in their ancestral home is shown by an observation that we made on the only occasion that we ever saw this species in our garden. Nothing was stirring at half past three o’clock in the afternoon, and we had given up work and started for home, when, in going up an inclined part of the field, we noticed something in motion within a ragged–edged hole which ran obliquely into the ground. It seemed strange that a wasp should be beginning its nest at so late an hour; but a wasp it was, as we could plainly see when we took an attitude sufficiently humble. It was loosening the earth with its mandibles, and then pushing it backward with its hind legs and abdomen. We had scarcely settled down to watching it when a second one of the same species appeared, and with a good deal of fuss and flutter began to dig its hole close by. The spot chosen by this second one proved unsatisfactory, and another beginning was made in a new place. Again something was wrong, nor was a third choice any better. At last, however, the work was started in earnest, and might have been carried to a conclusion if we had not caught the little creature to satisfy a suspicion that had been growing in our minds. Yes, we were right. The worker was not a female making a nest for the rearing of her young, but a male punctatus, preparing a shelter for the night.