290 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



I have before remarked that bees do not work indiscriminately 

 on every species of flower that comes to hand, notwithstanding 

 they are all honey-producers; but one peregrination is confined 

 to collecting from one species, and in the next ramble they may 

 select another, and so on. Whatever species of flower they may 

 select to gather from, it is not the colour of the bloom that is the 

 attraction. In watching bees at work on a bed of poppies, the 

 brightly-coloured flowers are not chosen in preference to white. 

 Any colour in the bed is as attractive as that of any other. 



"Bees repeatedly passed in a direct line from one variety to 

 another of the same species, although they bore very differently- 

 coloured flowers. I observed also bees flying in a straight line from 

 one clump of yellow-flowered CEnthera to every clump of the same 

 plant in the garden without turning an inch from their course 

 to plants of JEschscholtzia, and others with yellow flowers, which lay 

 only a foot or two on either side. In these cases the bees knew 

 the position of each plant in the garden . so that they 



were guided by experience and memory."* The experience they 

 had gained was that CEnthera contained more food than Esch- 

 scholtzia, and Nature had taught them that it would be impossible 

 to impregnate the ovaries of the one with the pollen of the other. 



What is our Australian experience as it regards the colour 

 of flowers that are chiefly visited by bees? There is no denying 

 that some of our endemic flowers are as brightly coloured as the 

 exotic ; and, before the introduction of foreign plants and the 

 bee (Api§ mellifica), the chief honey-gathering social insect was 

 the little native bee (Trigona carbonaria), one of the chief insect 

 fertilisers in Australia. The chief honey-yielding plants in these 

 States are the Pittosporum and the tea-tree (Leptospermum family) . 

 The colour of the native flowers named are whitish, with a few 

 exceptions. The chief exotics that have been introduced are fruit- 

 bearing and ornamental flowering plants, which nearly in all cases 

 bear brightly-coloured flowers or blossoms. The exotic, white, 

 flowering fruit trees in the spring-time are very conspicuous by 

 the multiplicity of the blooms they bear ; yet our little native 

 bees now as readily find the nectary in them as our introduced 

 bees, and they cannot have had ages of experience to guide them. 



On the other hand, it is very singular that the hive-bee, on 

 its introduction into Australia, and before it had been sufficiently 

 colonised, should forsake the highly-coloured garden flowers of 



"Darwin, in " Cro3s and Self-Fertilization of Plants." 



