Chapter 12 Cotton bee

We know that there are many bees, like the sawfly, who do not build their own nests, but only take the nests left or abandoned by other animals as their shelters.Some bees will live in the former residence of the mason bee, some will live in the tunnel of the earthworm or the empty shell of the snail, some will occupy the branch where the miner bee used to occupy, and some will move into the place where the digger bee once lived. Inhabited sand pits.Among these sojourners is the cotton picker, whose sojournment is particularly peculiar.It makes a cotton bag on reed branches, and this cotton bag becomes its perfect sleeping bag; there is also a kind of bee called snail, which stuffs gum and resin into the empty shell of the snail, and after some decoration, it becomes It can be used as a room.

The mason bee hastily built a "concrete nest" out of earth, and was done; the carpenter bee, having drilled a nine-inch-deep hole in dead wood, was content to live.Although their home is very rough, they still have honey and eggs as the first important thing, and they have no time to elaborately decorate their living room, as long as the house can be sheltered from wind and rain; and other kinds of bees can be regarded as decorative arts. Master, like the woodcutter bee makes a series of small nests covered with leaves in the tunnel of earthworms, like the cotton picker makes a small delicate cotton bag in the reed branch, so that the original tunnel and reed branch have a special style, It's amazing.

Seeing the small white and delicate cotton bags, we can know that cotton pickers are not suitable for digging, they can only do this kind of decoration work.The cotton bag is very long and white, especially when it is not filled with honey, it looks like a light and delicate work of art.I don't think there is a bird's nest so clean and fine as the cotton sacks of the cotton pickers.How does it gather cotton balls one by one into a pin-shaped bag?It also has no other special tools, but has the same dexterous beak as the mason bee and the wood saw bee, but their work is quite different both in the way and in the results.

It's hard to see cotton pickers working in the reed branches, they usually pick cotton on mullein, thistles, orris, which has long since lost moisture, so there will be no unsightly water marks in the future. It works like this: it first stops on the dry branch of the plant, tears off the outer skin with its mouth, and after gathering enough cotton, it presses the cotton to the chest with its hind feet to form a small ball. When it was the size of a pea, it put the ball in its mouth and flew away with it.If we are patient we will see it come back to the same plant over and over again until its sack is done.

Cotton pickers divide the cotton they pick into different grades to suit the different needs of each part of the bag.In a way they are like birds.In order to make their nests stronger, birds will use hard branches to form a frame; and in order to make the nest warmer and more comfortable, and suitable for hatching young birds, they will fill the bottom of the nest with different feathers.The cotton-picker does the same with its nest, lining the inside of it with the finest cotton wool, and making "doors" and "windows" at the entrance with stiff branches or leaves. I don't see the cotton picker making a nest on a branch, but I do see how it makes a "plug", which is actually the "roof" of its nest.It tears and spreads the cotton with its hind feet, and at the same time loosens the hard lumps in the cotton with its mouth, and then lays it up layer by layer, and presses it firmly with its forehead.This is a rough job.In retrospect, it probably uses this method when it does other parts of delicate work.

After finishing the roof, a few cotton pickers were afraid that it would be unreliable, so they had to fill in the gaps between the branches.They made use of whatever material was available: a small grain of sand, a pinch of mud, a few chips of wood, a small lump of cement, or scraps of various plants.This nest is indeed a strong fortification, and no enemy can break into it. The honey that cotton pickers store in their nest is a pale yellow gelatinous granule so they don't ooze out of the cotton bag.On this honey lay its eggs.Soon, the larvae hatched.As soon as they opened their eyes, they found that the food had already been prepared, so they burrowed their heads into the nectar and ate it in big mouthfuls. It was delicious and gradually became fatter.We can no longer look after it now.For we know that before long it spins a cocoon and becomes a cotton picker like their mother.

There is another kind of bees, they also use the ready-made houses of other people and slightly transform them into their own living places, that is the fat bee.On the stone pile near the ore, you can often see snails sitting and eating various hard nuts.They ran away after eating, leaving a pile of empty shells on the stone pile.Among these we are likely to find a few hollow shells stuffed with resin, which are the nests of the bees.Bamboo wasps also make nests out of snail shells, but they fill them with dirt. It is difficult to know what is going on inside the hive.Because its nest is always made at the end of the spiral of the snail shell, there is a long distance from the shell mouth, and the structure inside cannot be seen from the outside.I picked up a shell and took a picture, and it looked quite transparent, which means that it was an empty shell, and it was likely to be spotted by a fat bee in the future and settle here, so I put it back to the original place, Make it a nest for future fat bees.I changed another photo and found that the second section was opaque, so there must be something in it.what is it then?Is it the dirt that washes in when it rains?Or a dead snail?I'm not sure.So I made a small hole in the shell at the end, and I saw a layer of shiny resin, with grains of sand embedded in it, and the truth became clear: I had got exactly the nest of the Grease Bee.

The fat bee often chooses a section of suitable size in the shell of a snail as its nest.In large shells, its nest is at the end of the shell.In small shells, its nest is built near the mouth of the shell.It often uses fine sand embedded in the gum to make a patterned film.At first I didn't know it was gum either.It was a yellow translucent substance, brittle, soluble in alcohol, which smoked when burned and had a strong resinous smell.From these characteristics, you can tell that the grease bee uses the resin that flows from the tree trunk. Under the cover of resin and sand, there is a second line of defense, a barrier of sand, twigs, etc., which fill in the gaps in the shell.Cotton picker bees have similar defense engineering.However, this kind of engineering of the fat bee is only available in large shells, because there are more voids in large shells.In small shells, if its nest is not far from the entrance, it does not need a second line of defense.

Behind the second line of defense is the small room.At the end of the segment of the shell chosen by the bee, there are two chambers, the larger anterior chamber, containing a male bee, and the smaller rear chamber, containing a female bee—the male bee is larger than the female bee.One thing scientists still can't explain is how can a mother bee know in advance whether the eggs she lays will be female or male?That is, how do they guarantee that the eggs produced in the front room will be drones in the future, and the eggs produced in the back room will definitely become females? Sometimes, when the bees build their nests, a small neglect can cause a big tragedy for the next generation.Let's take a look at Chuang, the unlucky fat bee!He chose a large shell and built his nest at the end of the shell, but forgot to fill the space from the entrance to the nest with scraps.We mentioned earlier that there is a kind of bamboo bee that also builds its nest in the snail shell. It often does not know that there is an owner at the bottom of the shell. When it sees that there is a gap in the shell, it builds its nest in this section. space, and sealed the entrance with a thick layer of soil.Come July, the tragedy begins.The bees in the fat-collecting hive at the back have grown up, they have bitten through the film, broke through the defense line, and want to free themselves.However, their passage has long been blocked by a strange family.They tried to notify the neighbors to let them give way temporarily, but no matter how they made noise, the neighbors in the outer room remained silent.Are they deliberately pretending not to hear?No, the larvae of the bamboo wasp are still being gestated at this time, and they won't grow until next spring at least!No wonder they have been indifferent.The bee cannot break through the defenses of the soil, and it's all over.They can only let themselves starve to death in the hole.This can only be blamed on the careless mother. If they had expected this, then this tragedy would not have happened.If that careless mother finds out that she killed the children alive, how much she would hate herself!Unfortunate encounters do not make the offspring of blubber bees learn to behave. In fact, blubber bees make such mistakes from time to time. incompatible.But it's no wonder, you think, those bees that were locked in the shell were buried in it forever, and none of them survived. No one can know the strange injustice through the ages, let alone let the offspring of the fat bee learn a lesson.