r Tailor bee (Megachile),
have always attracted attention. This bee is a stout, thick-bodied
insect, with a large, square head, stout, sharp, scissors-like jaws, and
with a thick mass of stout, dense hairs on the under side of the tail
for carrying pollen, as she is not provided with the pollen-basket of
the Honey and Humble bees.

The Megachile lays its eggs in burrows in the stems of the elder (Fig.
24), which we have received from Mr. James Angus; we have also found
them in the hollows of the locust tree. Mr. F. W. Putnam thus speaks of
the economy of M. centuncularis, our most common species. "My attention
was first called, on the 26th of June, to a female busily engaged in
bringing pieces of leaf to her cells, which she was building under a
board, on the roof of the piazza, directly under my window. Nearly the
whole morning was occupied by the bee in bringing pieces of leaf from a
rose bush growing about ten yards from her cells, returning at intervals
of a half minute to a minute with the pieces, which she carried in such
a manner as not to impede her steps when she alighted near her hole."
When the Leaf-cutter bee wishes to cut out a piece of a leaf (Fig. 25)
she alights upon the leaf, and in a few seconds swiftly runs her
scissors-like jaws around through it, bearing off the piece in her hind
legs. "About noon she had probably completed the cell, upon which she
had been engaged, as, during the afternoon, she was occupied in bringing
pollen, preparatory to laying her single egg in the cell. For about
twenty days the bee continued at work, building new cells and supplying
them with pollen.... On the 28th of July, upon removing the board, it
was found that the bee had made thirty cells, arranged in nine rows of
unequal length, some being slightly curved to adapt them to the space
under the board. The longest row contained six cells, and was two and,
three-quarters inches in length; the whole leaf structure being equal to
a length of fifteen inches. Upon making an estimate of the pieces of
leaf in this structure, it was ascertained that there must have been at
least a thousand pieces used. In addition to the labor of making the
cells, this bee, unassisted in all her duties, had to collect the
requisite amount of pollen (and honey?) for each cell, and lay her eggs
therein, when completed. Upon carefully cutting out a portion of one of
the cells, a full-grown larva was seen engaged in spinning a slight
silken cocoon a