No. 542] 



COLOR SENSE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



105 



glass slide and substituted the rhubarb leaf, reversing 

 its position, however, so that the small object was where 

 the larger had been before. 



Both bees returned to the cluster of four balsam 

 flowers. One of them presently flew over to the single 

 petal, but soon returned to the cluster; later it .main 

 went to the petal and again returned. Both bees left 

 for the hive. 



A bee returned to the cluster, did not alight, but flew 

 over to the petal and sucked. When the second bee re- 

 turned it disturbed the bee on the red petal, and both 

 went to the cluster. One of the bees left for the hive. 



A bee came from the hive to the cluster. One of the 

 bees then flew over to the petal but did not alight, re- 

 turned to the cluster. Both bees left for the hive. 



Both bees returned to the cluster. One of them left for 

 the hive and on its return went to the petal. The bee on 

 the cluster left for the hive. 



While the cluster of four red flowers received the 

 greater number of visits, as would be expected, more 

 attention was given to the drop of honey associated with 

 a red petal than was received by the larger oval mass of 

 honey alone in the preceding experiment. 



In a series of interesting experiments with cotton 

 flowers where the visitors were chiefly a species of Melis- 

 sodes (M. bimaculata), recently described by Allard, it 

 was observed that when a flower was partially screened 

 by leaves the attention it received decreased ; and when 

 the petals were masked on both sides with sections of 

 green leaves the flower was ignored entirely. 23 This re- 

 sult was confirmed by the following experiment. On a 

 cloudy, windy day while a number of black bees were 

 visiting the feeder for honey, I placed on the grass two 

 red flowers of the Zanzibar balsam; each was five feet 

 from the base of the feeder and their distance apart was 



ior of Various Bees in their Visits to Cotton Blossor 



Nat. 



