COLOUR OF FLOWERS ITS INFLUENCE ON BEE LIFE. 299 



dock of lucerne near by had been permitted to flower, and the bees 

 had gone thither. Were they attracted by the purple flowers ? Not 

 a bit of it. Lucerne, like other trefoils, produce an abundance of 

 bee food, far more than any of the cruciforms, and the bees had 

 gone where they could get the greatest quantity in the shortest space 

 of time. In about twenty-four hours afterwards the lucerne was 

 cut, and the bees returned to the turnips. 



Darwin says: "It would appear that either the taste or the 

 odour of the nectary of certain flowers are unattractive to hive-bees 

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

 open flowers which secrete nectar are not visited by both. The small 

 quantity of nectar secreted by some of these flowers can hardly be 

 the. cause of their neglect, as hive-bees search eagerly for the minute 

 drops on the glands of the leaves of the Prunus laurocerasus." The 

 small quantity was the cause, as was the reason my bees left the 

 turnips for the lucerne. 



Early one spring I saw bees eagerly working the flower-heads 

 of couch-grass. We all know that the flower of the couch has not 

 an attractive colour. The endemic or native flowers intermixed 

 here and there with them were far more showy. Looking into my 

 bees I found young larvae were plentiful ; pollen for bee-bread was 

 needed. The endemic flowers were producing little or none, but 

 on the couch-grass there was a fairly good supply, and this supply 

 was the cause of their neglecting the brighter coloured blooms for 

 the greenish-yellow flowers of the couch-grass. 



Watch a large bed of poppies of mixed colours. No one colour 

 is. neglected by the bees. They are as eager to forage in the white 

 as in the red. Poppies are great pollen producers. 



Again Darwin says :• ' '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 bees also flying in a 

 straight line from one clump of yellow-flowered (Enthera to every 

 clump of the same plant in the garden without turning an inch 

 from their course to plants of E schscholtzia and others with yellow 

 flowers, which lay a foot or two on either side." "In these oases," 

 he continues, "the bees knew the position of each plant in the 

 garden, so that they were guided by experience and memory." 

 Their experience was that the (Enthera contained more food, and 

 Nature had taught them that it would be impossible to fertilise the 

 ovaries of (Enthera with the pollen from Eschscholtzia. 



