THE COLOE SENSE OF THE HONEY-BEE: CAN 

 BEES DISTINGUISH COLOES? 



JOHN H. LOVELL 



Can bees distinguish between differently colored floral 

 leaves? If they can not, then, a polychromatic flora 

 possesses no advantage over one in which the flowers 

 are all of the same hue. In the Alpine flora, says Ker- 

 ner, on the heights above the tree-line, there is actually 

 no spring and no autumn, only a short summer following 

 a long winter. All the flowers have, therefore, to blos- 

 som in a short time. 1 1 White and red, yellow and blue, 

 brown and green, stand in varied combination on a 

 hand's-breadth of space." 1 These color contrasts, it is 

 believed, enabh 1 bees easily to remain constant to a single 

 plant species so that pollination is effected to the mutual 

 advantage of both insects and flowers. If the flowers were 

 visited indiscriminately, regardless of their form, much 

 pollen would be wasted and not a little time and effort 

 would be lost. Genera adapted to bees, according to 

 Miiller, display a variety of colors, especially when they 

 bloom simultaneously in the same locality, as Aconitum 

 lycoctonum yellow, A. napellus blue; Lamium album 

 white, L. maculatum red, Galeobdolon luteum yellow; 

 Salvia glutinosa yellow, 8. pratensis blue; Pedicularis 

 tuberosa whitish yellow, P. verticillata purple. 



If the different colors were evolved, as I believe, because of the power 

 and necessity in bees of discriminating between them then it is not 

 wonderful to find represented among' bee flowers not only white, yellow, 

 red, violet, blue, brown and even blackish (Bartsia) in the most varied 

 degrees, but also to see several colors in the same flower combined in 

 manifold ways. I mention only Pohjgala Chamccbuxus, Viola tricolor, 



Werner, Anton, "Natural History of Plants," translated by P. W. 

 Oliver, 2, pt. 1, 198. Also see Plate XII. ; "Alpine Flowers in the Tyrol," 

 drawn from nature by E. Heyn. 



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