No. 527] COLOR SENSE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



679 



had learned from experience that there was an ample sup- 

 ply of amber-colored honey on each of the four slides. 



The purpose of my next experiment was to determine 

 whether bees could readily determine a colored slide from 

 a plain glass one. On September 10, 1908, I accustomed 

 a line of Italian bees to visit a yellow slide. I then moved 

 it six inches to one side, and exactly in its place I put a 

 glass slide, under which there was no colored paper. A 

 small quantity of honey was placed on the center of each 

 slide. During twenty minutes the bees were carefully 

 watched, and twelve visits to the yellow slide were 

 recorded. A species of Yespa had built a nest not far 

 away, and some of the workers also came to the yellow 

 slide, and although they were an extraneous or foreign 

 factor not directly connected with the experiment, their 

 behavior was not without interest. Near the end of the 

 time mentioned one of the wasps discovered the honey on 

 the colorless slide and subsequently visited it. A bee 

 attracted apparently by the presence of the wasp on this 

 slide alighted beside it, but after a few moments flew 

 across to the yellow. 



I now transposed the slides, the distance apart remain- 

 ing six inches as before. During ten minutes the Italian 

 bees made eight and the wasps nine visits to the yellow 

 slide. Only one visit was made to the colorless slide and 

 that was by a wasp. Another wasp alighted on the color- 

 less slide for a few moments before going to the yellow. 

 There were a number of visits made by flies, all of which 

 were to the yellow. In this experiment not only was the 

 colored slide easily distinguished from the one without 

 color, but it was apparently more attractive not alone to 

 the bees, which had been trained to visit it, but to inci- 

 dental visitors Midi as the \vasp> and Hie>. There were. 



yellow color, as there were in the earlier experiments, 

 when they were given the choice between two colors. 



indeed, so marked that possibly it might be objected that 



The preference of th 



