26O C. H. TURNER. 



Von Buttel-Reepen states: "We have seen above that the flight 

 [of bees] becomes very unsafe in the dusk; therefore it is evident 

 that gloomy weather influences considerably the ability to orient. 

 'One of my former neighbors,' Roth says in his communication, 

 'painted the gable of his house over the apiary with a sky-blue 

 (luftblau) color. The same bees which always flew over the 

 gable, on the next dark day, bumped against it with their heads, 

 trying to fly through it.' A teacher, Staehelin, made the following 

 observations: A weak after-swarm, mostly of young bees from 

 a hive painted blue, dispersed among the masses of humming bees 

 which were just taking their flight of orientation out of the other 

 hives (which, as is usually the case in Germany, Switzerland, and 

 Austria, were standing close together), and settled here and there 

 in clumps. After a short time they flew back to the bee-house; 

 but only a few found the right hive; the rest flew to other 

 colonies, and to which? Only to those where a blue door invited 

 them did they attempt an entrance, but nowhere else. Unfor- 

 tunately they were so hostilely received that the ground in front 

 of all of the blue hives was covered with bees." 



Bethe had a swarm of bees lodged in a brown hive which rested 

 on a table. He painted the outside of the hive blue and covered 

 the table with green branches. Instead of the backgrond of 

 trees, he substituted one of white and yellow flowered cloth. 

 No change was produced in the home-coming of the bees. This 

 Bethe considers conclusive proof that bees are not guided home 

 by memory picture contributed by the eyes. 



So far as my knowledge goes, M. Gaston Bonnier 1 is the only 

 recent investigator who furnishes any experimental evidence that 

 supports Bethe's view. He found that bees, the eyes of which 

 had been rendered opaque with pigmented collodion, would pass 

 direct to the hive from any distance less than three kilometers. 

 This observation, which is not in harmony with Forel's experi- 

 ence, 2 supports Bethe's contention, but it has no direct bearing 

 upon color vision. 



The purpose of this paper is not to discuss the homing of the 



'Bonnier, M. Gaston, "Le sens de la direction chcz les abeilles," C. R. Acad. 

 Sci., Paris, T. CXLVIII., 1909, pp. 1019-1022. 



2 Forel always found that bees, the eyes of which had been rendered opaque, 

 could not find their way home. 



