288 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



as those of brighter colours, and most pronounced markings. 

 George Massee, in "The Plant World," says "that the only use 

 of colour in the flower is that of an advertisement indicating their 

 presence to insects." When stamens lose their character as such, 

 and become petals, the intensity of colour increases and it becomes 

 more attractive to the eye ; nevertheless, the more double a flower 

 becomes the less it is attractive to insects. 



Mr. R. T. Baker, Curator, Technical Museum, informs me 

 that when botanising in the mountainous districts of New South 

 Wales, near a garden filled with gorgeous-coloured flowers, he ob- 

 served a specimen of Panax sambucifolius, the small, inconspicuous 

 flowers of which were literally swarming with bees in quest of 

 honey and pollen ; and those brightly-coloured blooms in the gar- 

 den were in nearly every case passed over by the bees for the 

 purpose of visiting the specimen named. 



Some of the writers I have referred to have given their ex- 

 perience of watching bees searching for the nectary, and the in- 

 sects' apparent failure to discover it at first sight. When bees 

 are seen searching about the essential organs of flowers it is not 

 the nectary they are in search of, but the gyrations they make 

 are for the purpose of collecting the grains of pollen. If a bee 

 is seen at work on a sunflower or other composite bloom, her move- 

 ments in gathering pollen differ greatly from those in collecting 

 honey. Every leg is brought into play in the former work, and 

 her motions are as systematic and various as the figures in a 

 country dance. How differently she goes to work in collecting 

 honey. Her head bends towards every expanded flower, and her 

 tongue is thrust into every nectary. At some she pauses moment- 

 arily — some insect has been there before her ; at others her stay 

 is longer; she has her reward. 



Notwithstanding an insect may have rifled the nectary of its 

 honey, and when visited by the bee found to be empty, in a few 

 minutes another or the same bee will revisit it, and this time her 

 stay may be longer, because between the two visits the nectary 

 will have secreted another supply. The indecision of the bee at a 

 flower is no proof that she is looking for the position of the 

 nectary. 



To-day bees may be industriously at work upon a flower of 

 certain colour, and to-morrow forsake it for one of less conspicuous 

 shade. "It would appear," says Darwin, "that either the taste 

 or the odour of the nectary of certain flowers is unattractive to 

 hive-bees, or to humble-bees, or to both, for there seems no reason 



