abstract:Mass provisioning is a term used in entomology to refer to a form of parental behavior in which an adult (most commonly a hymenopteran such as a bee or wasp) stocks all of the food for each offspring in a small chamber (a "cell") prior to laying the egg. In such cases, the food is typically in the form of paralyzed or dead prey items (in predatory wasps), or masses of mixed pollen and nectar (in bees); only rarely are other sorts of food resources used (such as floral oils, leaves, dung, or carrion).