continues to occupy its original position.

The experiment receives an added interest if we employ two
neighbouring nests the work on which is about equally advanced. I move
each to where the other stood. They are not much more than thirty
inches a part. In spite of their being so near to each other that it
is quite possible for the insects to see both homes at once and choose
between them, each Bee, on arriving, settles immediately on the
substituted nest and continues her work there. Change the two nests as
often as you please and you shall see the two Mason-bees keep to the
site which they selected and labour in turn now at their own cell and
now at the other's.

One might think that the cause of this confusion lies in a close
resemblance between the two nests, for at the start, little expecting
the results which I was to obtain, I used to choose the nests which I
interchanged as much alike as possible, for fear of disheartening the
Bees. I need not have taken this precaution: I was giving the insect
credit for a perspicacity which it does not possess. Indeed, I now
take two nests which are extremely unlike each other, the only point
of resemblance being that, in each case, the toiler finds a cell in
which she can continue the work which she is actually doing. The first
is an old nest whose dome is perforated with eight holes, the
apertures of the cells of the previous generation. One of these cells
has been repaired; and the Bee is busy storing it. The second is a
nest of recent construction, which has not received its mortar dome
and consists of a single cell with its stucco covering. Here too the
insect is busy hoarding pollen-paste. No two nests could present
greater differences: one with its eight empty chambers and its
spreading clay dome; the other with its single bare cell, at most the