No. 527] COLOR SENSE OE THE HONEY-BEE 



687 



Additional observations might easily be given, but those 

 presented appear sufficiently conclusive. It has been 

 shown that bees can distinguish between the colors of 

 papers, of flowers, and of painted hives, and that they are 

 more strongly influenced by a colored slide than by a 

 plain glass one. It may well be doubted whether they 

 would ever have been capable of making long journeys 

 afield for nectar and pollen, if this visual power had been 

 wanting. To those unfamiliar with the habits of bees, 

 it will occasion surprise that the bee after it had dis- 

 covered and began sucking honey on the red slide (to 

 take for illustration the ninth visit of the first experi- 

 ment) should have voluntarily left it .and gone back to 

 the blue for the larger part of its load. But its behavior 

 in this instance is quite in accord with the principles of 

 bee psychology. Bees, as Forel states as the result of 

 his own and the experience of Huber, Buttel-Reepen and 

 Wasmann, very rapidly form habits, and their attention 

 becoming fixed by frequent repetitions is not easily di- 

 verted. 10 When the bee, which had been trained to visit 

 the blue slide, alighted on the red, it was disturbed by the 

 difference of hue and suffered a certain degree of mental 

 disquietude, which was not allayed until it returned to the 

 blue. 



All of the higher Hymenoptera probably possess the 

 power of distinguishing colors. This has been estab- 

 lished for the social wasps of the genus Vespa by the 

 interesting experiments of the Peckhams. One of their 

 experiments very strikingly shows the value of color con- 

 trasts, and effectively refutes Plateau's assertion that all 

 flowers might be as green as their leaves without their 

 pollination 



We once p 1 - 



