The first larval stage is the "triungulin," a tiny, active, armoured larva with long legs (each foot with three claws) and cercopods.
All that do not happen to attach themselves to a bee of the genus Anthophora perish, but those that succeed in reaching the right host are carried to the nest, and as the bee lays an egg in the cell the triungulin slips off her body on to the egg, which floats on the surface of the honey.
The triungulin searches for the eggs, and, after a moult, becomes changed into a soft-skinned tapering larva.
Chapman, who finds that the eggs are laid in old wood, and that the triungulin seeks to attach itself to a social wasp, who carries it to her nest.
While thus carried about by the host-insect, the female is fertilized by the free-flying male, and gives birth to a number of tiny triungulin larvae.