Volume 1 The Wise Killer Chapter 3: The Knotweed Mud Bee That Preys on Giding
Knuckle-bee
1. Fabre had been forgotten by reading Dufour's book on hymenoptera insects, which inspired him to make up his mind to complete a work of entomology. This is the fate of books and people, some unintentional text makes us completely forget about ourselves, and then it becomes a guide and inspiration book.
2. When Fabre came into contact with the gidding worm and became interested, he decided to do everything he could to dig it himself. He also always encouraged us that instead of sitting down and fantasizing, it was better to go out and always have a result waiting for you.
3. Dufour's book writes that the knotweed mud bee hunts many giddings and buries them in nests to feed the larvae, and mentions that giddings live in large areas in oak forests. However, fabre lived in the countryside and could not find oak forests, but he also observed the knotweed mud wasps, so he decided to go to the pine forest to observe.
Gidding worms
4. Fabre carefully dug many holes in the pine forest - the nest of the arthropod mud bee was always deep underground, and the result was gratifying, he turned out many holes in the many larvae of the arthropod mud bee that were biting giddings, and dug out more than 400 giddings from them.
5. At this time, we can observe the burrow of the lower segmental mud bee, they generally choose a tight land, dig a long bend that is enough to transport larger prey, and then dig and decorate 5 separate hives, each house stores three gidding worms. After laying eggs in the giddings, the female bee seals the bend with soil.
6. The nectar-bee feeds on nectar but can hunt Giding as food for larvae very well. Fabre observed and found that the corpses of the giddings they had hunted could remain alive for a long time, which made people curious, and the mystery must have been in a drop of poison it injected.
7. Fabre also had another doubt, in the forest of various insects flying, the knotweed mud bees in different regions without exception chose Giding as the larval food, because of taste, nutrition or what other reasons?
On the weekend, on the occasion of the sunny day, remember to take the baby to the wild to see, I remember that this kind of mud bee in the fields of southern Fujian is quite common, when I was a child, I also heard of poison, and later learned that the poison is another kind of wasp.