284 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



development of flowers." {Bead the irholc quotation on previous- 

 paffe.) "I thought," he says, "it would be desirable to prove 



this, if possible, by actual fact. ... I brought a bee to some 

 honey which I placed on blue paper, and about 3 feet off I placed 

 a similar quantity of honey on orange paper." \^Note, his experi- 

 ments were carried out with paper covered with honey, not with 

 flowers.] "The bee carried away a load of honey and returned 

 to the same blue paper twice." Pie then transpos-ed the papers, 

 and she made three more visits to the same coloured paper. r)n 

 the following day he again transposed the colours. The bee "re- 

 tui-ned to the old place, and was just going to alight, but observ- 

 ing the change of colours, without a moment's hesitation darted' 

 off to the blue. No one who saw her at that moment could have 

 entertained the slightest doubt about her perceiving the difference- 

 between the two colours." Yes; because she had learned it was 

 the blue paper that gave her food. The bee was working by sight, 

 exactly upon the same lines as the highly intellectual man acts. 

 If there be two cupboards or safes of two different colours in a 

 room — a blue one containing his food, and an orange one his 

 papers — if their positions are frequently changed he goes into the 

 room and looks for the one, by its colour, that contains the food 

 or papers he may require ; but if he had been accustomed to find 

 the blue safe in the room in the same position, he would enter 

 the room and would be about to open it, "but observing the change 

 of colours, without a moment's hesitation," he too would "dart 

 off to the blue,' and "no one who saw him at that moment could, 

 entertain the slightest doubt about his perceiving the difference 

 between the two colours" of the safes. It was not the colour that 

 attracted the bee; it was the food. Notwithstanding the trans- 

 positions of colour, as soon as all the honey had been used up, the 

 orange or other colour would have beeii just as attractive if bee 

 food were placed on it. 



On one occasion I saw a bunch of flowers that had been 

 brought from a distance thrown o^ut on a rubbish heap. It was 

 early spring, and at the time bee food was very scarce, especially 

 pollen. There was a good store of honey within the hives; there 

 was also young brood; therefore, pollen was needed. As eoon 

 as the bees saw these discarded blooms many of them were "just 

 going to alight," bv\t observing there was no food they hastened 

 off' to the inconspicuous flowers of the couch grass, upon which 

 they had been at work for several days, because there was nothing 

 else at that time supplying them with pollen that was so essential 

 for the young brood. 



