a stranger who, finding the cell whose owner I myself had exiled
untenanted, has installed herself there and made it her property, not
knowing that it is already the property of another. She has perhaps
been victualling it since yesterday evening. Close upon ten o'clock,
when the heat is at its full, the mistress of the house suddenly
arrives: her title-deeds as the original occupant are inscribed for me
in undeniable characters on her thorax white with chalk. Here is one
of my travellers back.

Over waving corn, over fields all pink with sainfoin, she has covered
the two miles and a half; and here she is, back at the nest, after
foraging on the way, for the doughty creature arrives with her abdomen
yellow with pollen. To come home again from the verge of the horizon
is wonderful in itself; to come home with a well-filled pollen-brush
is superlative economy. A journey, even a forced journey, always
becomes a foraging-expedition.

She finds the stranger in the nest:

'What's this? I'll teach you!'

And the owner falls furiously upon the intruder, who possibly was
meaning no harm. A hot chase in mid-air now takes place between the
two Masons. From time to time, they hover almost without movement,
face to face, with only a couple of inches separating them, and here,
doubtless measuring forces with their eyes, they buzz insults at each
other. Then they go back and alight on the nest in dispute, first one,
then the other. I expect to see them come to blows, to make them draw
their stings. But my hopes are disappointed: the duties of maternity
speak in too imperious a voice for them to risk their lives and wipe