Then the beauty retires into the arbour and her wooers resume their places on the threshold.

A fresh appearance of the female, who repeats the play with her jaws; a fresh retreat of the males, who do the best they can to flourish their own pincers.

The Osmiae have a strange way of declaring their passion: with that fearsome gnashing of their mandibles, the lovers look as though they meant to devour each other.
It suggests the thumps affected by our yokels in their moments of gallantry.
The ingenuous idyll is soon over.

The females, who grow more numerous from day to day, inspect the premises; they buzz outside the glass galleries and the reed dwellings; they go in, stay for a while, come out, go in again and then fly away briskly into the garden.

They return, first one, then another.