It is as plain as a pikestaff: outside my cages, when the opportunity offers, the Philanthus must also kill the Bee on her own account. The Odynerus asks nothing from the Chrysomela but a mere condiment, the aromatic juice of the rump; the other extracts from her victim an ample supplement to her victuals, the crop full of honey. What a hecatomb of Bees must not a colony of these freebooters make for their personal consumption, not to mention the stored provisions! I recommend the Philanthus to the signal vengeance of our Bee-masters. Let us go no deeper into the first causes of the crime. Let us accept things as we know them for the moment, with their apparent or real atrocity. To feed herself, the Philanthus levies tribute on the Bee's crop. Having made sure of this, let us consider the bandit's method more closely. She does not paralyse her capture according to the rites customary among the Hunting Wasps; she kills it. Why kill it? If the eyes of our understanding be not closed, the need for sudden death is clear as daylight. The Philanthus proposes to obtain the honeyed broth without ripping up the Bee, a proceeding which would damage the game when it is hunted on behalf of the larvae, without resorting to the murderous extirpation of the crop. She must, by able handling, by skilful pressure, make the Bee disgorge, she must milk her, in a manner of speaking. Suppose the Bee stung behind the corselet and paralysed. That deprives her of her power of locomotion, but not of her vitality. The digestive organs in particular retain or very nearly retain their normal energy, as is proved by the frequent excretions that take place in the paralysed prey, so long as the intestine is not empty, as is proved above all by the victims of the Languedocian Sphex (Cf. "The Hunting Wasp": chapters 8 to 10.--Translator's Note.), those helpless creatures which I used to keep alive for forty days on end with a soup consisting of sugar and water. It is absurd to hope, without therapeutic means, without a special emetic, to coax a sound stomach into emptying its contents. The stomach of the Bee, who is jealous of her treasure, would lend itself to the process even less readily than another. When paralysed, the insect is inert; but there are always internal energies and organic forces which will not yield to the manipulator's pressure. The Philanthus will nibble at the throat and squeeze the sides in vain: the honey will not rise to the mouth so long as a vestige of life keeps the crop closed.