take no notice of the others, whose finished
work will have my attention later.

The first to appear are the males. If the sun is bright, they flutter
around the heap of tubes as if to take careful note of the locality;
blows are exchanged and the rival swains indulge in mild skirmishing
on the floor, then shake the dust off their wings and fly away. I find
them, opposite my window, in the refreshment-bar of the lilac-bush,
whose branches bend with the weight of their scented panicles. Here the
Bees get drunk with sunshine and draughts of honey. Those who have had
their fill come home and fly assiduously from tube to tube, placing
their heads in the orifices to see if some female will at last make up
her mind to emerge.

One does, in point of fact. She is covered with dust and has the
disordered toilet that is inseparable from the hard work of the
deliverance. A lover has seen her, so has a second, likewise a third.
All crowd round her. The lady responds to their advances by clashing her
mandibles, which open and shut rapidly, several times in succession. The
suitors forthwith fall back; and they also, no doubt to keep up their
dignity, execute savage mandibular grimaces. Then the beauty retires
into the arbour and her wooers resume their places on the threshold. A
fresh appearance of the female, who repeats the play with her jaws; a
fresh retreat of the males, who do the best they can to flourish their
own pincers. The Osmiae have a strange way of declaring their passion:
with that fearsome gnashing of their mandibles, the lovers look as
though they meant to devour each other. It suggests the thumps affected
by our yokels in their moments of gallantry.

The ingenious idyll is soon over. By turns greeting and greeted with a
clash of jaws, the female leaves her gallery and begins impassively to
polish her wings. The rivals rush forward, hoist themselves on top of
one another and form a pyramid of which each struggles to occupy the
base by toppling over the favoured lover. He, however, is careful not
to let go; he waits for the strife overhead to calm down; and, when the
supernumeraries realize that they are wasting their time and throw up
the game, the couple fly away far from the turbulent rivals. This is all
that I have been able to gather about the Osmia's nuptials.

The females, who grow more numerous from day to day, inspect the
premises; they buzz outside the glass galleries and the reed dwellings;
they go in,