Snail-shells

The first two make their nests in deserted Snail-shells; the other two shelter their groups of cells sometimes in the ground, sometimes under a large stone.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Snail-shells just as though her ancestors had never known the danger of the Osmia-blocked vestibule.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

The cement expended would be enough to divide hundreds of Snail-shells, wherefore the title of

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Thousands and thousands of experiments have been made throughout the ages with Snail-shells of average dimensions: the thing is certain, because I find many of them to-day.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

The stone-heaps in the Roman quarries near Serignan, which I have so often visited in search of the nests of the Osmia who takes up her abode in Snail-shells, supply me also with the two Resin-bees installed in similar quarters.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Snail-shells work, I find from time to time another manipulator of mastic who bears no structural relationship whatever to the genus

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

At places where dead Snail-shells are few and far between, as in the crevices of rustic walls, each Bee occupies by herself the shells which she has found.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

When the Field-mouse has left behind him a rich collection of empty shells scattered all round his hay mattress under the slab, there is always a hope of finding some Snail-shells plugged with mud and, here and there, mixed with them, a few Snail-shells closed with resin.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

In both cases, we find the same lodging, Snail-shells of every size and every kind, just as they happen to come; the same resin lid, the inside gritty with tiny bits of stone, the outside almost smooth and sometimes ornamented with little shells; the same barricade -- not always present -- of various kinds of rubbish; the same division into two rooms of unequal size occupied by the two sexes.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869

Next to these tenants of the Snail-shells we have two other Resin-bees who never come to the shells for a cabin for their nests.

Bramble-Bees and Others Jean-Henri Fabre 1869