the mark dries on the journey.

I start with two Mason-bees of the Walls working at their nests on the
pebbles in the alluvia of the Aygues, not far from Serignan. I carry
them home with me to Orange, where I release them after marking them.
According to the ordnance-survey map, the distance is about two and a
half miles as the crow flies. The captives are set at liberty in the
evening, at a time when the Bees begin to leave off work for the day.
It is therefore probable that my two Bees will spend their night in the
neighbourhood.

Next morning, I go to the nests. The weather is still too cool and the
works are suspended. When the dew has gone, the Masons begin work. I see
one, but without a white spot, bringing pollen to one of the nests
which had been occupied by the travellers whom I am expecting. She is
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 ou