PATTERN'- VISION OF THE HONEY BE1 . 26 I 



INTERPRETATION OF THE EXPERIMENTS. 



These experiments furnish additional evidence, if such is 

 needed, that Plateau is mistaken when he claims that odor is 

 the sole factor that leads bees to the honey of Hovers: for my 

 di-< -, marked with red and green stripes and well supplied with 

 honey, remained exposed to bees for fully two day- before a 

 -ingle bee collected honey from them [Ex. 1-5]. 



These experiment- -trengthen the impression, gained from 

 previous work with hymenopterous insects, that such insects 

 can lie induced to form new a ociations that will influence- their 

 behavior, it" only the experiment is so planned as to lead the 

 in-e( i to accidentally make the a--< .nation. So far a- my experi- 

 eno . ii i- almo-t impo--ible to coerce them into forming 



nev. iation-. and an abundance of time i- ohm ivquiied 



for i he !.. rmation of chance associations. Lack of response to a 

 -liimilu- does not mean that that -timulu- ha- not been noticed 

 by tlie in-ect-; but that, to them, it ha- not vet acquired a 



meaning. 



In induci: -, in the held, to re-pond to new food-object-, 



the ne\\ associations are formed much more quickly when the 

 1 1 i- '! t" \ie\\ than \\heii it i- hidden. The\ ma\ In- 



induced to form -uch associations, however, even under the latter 



condition-,. "l"he-e -lateiiiein- are -upported by the fact that 

 la-t year, when I conducted a lengthy series of experiment- \\iih 

 di-c- an<l cornucopia-, artifact- which did not hide the honey 

 In. m \ie\\. I soon had more bee- re-ponding to the artifact- than 



[ could keep an accurate record <.i : whereas this year, when I laid 



a-ide my di-c- and cornucopia- .1- -oon a- about half a do/en 

 bees had made the a--ociation, at no time wen- more bee- at 

 \\ork than could be counted. At the clo-e of the series about 

 twice a- many bee- \\ere collecting from the artifact- as at the 



lining. 



\\lien a bee had di-co\ered one of my honey-producing arti- 

 lact- ami collected therefrom, it would make a flight of orientation 

 and then lly home. < h\ returning to the field it would, by mean- 

 ol a -eric- ot ever narrow inc. complex, figure eight curves, 

 search out the experiment plot, and then, by a closer scrutiny 

 ot the surrounding obji-cts, locate the artifact desired. [Last 



