No. 539] THE BEHAVIOR OF BEES 683 



nectaries. These particular nectaries, although present 

 in our common American cottons, are never found on 

 the Asiatic cottons, Hawasaki, etc. In the writer's 

 variety tests these foreign cottons have been grown side 

 by side and sometimes intermingled in the rows with 

 the American cottons. The honey bees, in passing from 

 blossom to blossom, visiting each time the outer involu- 

 cral nectaries occasionally met the Asiatic variety. The 

 previous association with the American cottons and 

 their outer involucral nectaries led these bees to visit 

 without success similar structures of the unfamiliar 

 Asiatic variety. The bees quickly recognized their error 

 after alighting and left the blossoms. Is this procedure 

 other than the working of an associative memory? The 

 writer is of the opinion that the honey bees do not dis- 

 cover these extra-floral nectaries until after more or 

 less association with cotton blossoms each summer. 

 This habit of the honey bee appears to become more 

 noticeable later in the season. During the season of 

 1908 it appeared to be very general. It is a habit which 

 seems to be almost wholly confined to honey bees. 



These visits of the bees to the outer basal portion of 

 the Asiatic cotton blossoms indicate that the visual 

 powers alone were employed throughout the process. 

 Although the bees first discovered the blossoms by their 

 conspicuous petals, it is evident that they were led to 

 search for outer involucral nectaries on the Asiatic cot- 

 ton blossoms solely by their familiarity with the general 

 form and structure of cotton blossoms. 



As an illustration of associative memory this behavior 

 of the honey bees is exactly similar to the behavior of 

 certain bees in experiments conducted by Perez 4 , who 

 used scarlet pelargoniums which are not visited by bees, 

 since those flowers possess no nectar. He added honey 

 to certain flowers which were then visited by bees, and 

 says : 



