BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
I know that highly intellectual scientists of undoubted veracity have applied numerous tests, and given the results of their observations to the world, to prove that colours and perfumes are the chief signs that act, like the Southern Cross to the mariner, as indicators for bees to steer by in their peregrinations for the discovery of both pollen and honey. It has been conceded again and again that the tests and their results were unfailing proofs of the correctness of these suppositions, _i.e._, that flowers of very inconspicuous colours, markings, and shapes have developed into the bright and show colours and forms they now possess that are so attractive to the cultivated eye of lovers of the plant world.
Sir John Lubbock, in "_Bees, Lints, and Wasps,_" referring to the colour sense of bees, says: "The consideration of the causes which have led to the structure and colouring of flowers is one of the most fascinating parts of natural history. Most botanists are now agreed that insects, and especially bees, have played a very important part in the development of flowers. While in many plants, almost invariably with the inconspicuous blossoms, the pollen is carried from flower to flower by the wind; in cases of almost all large and brightly-coloured flowers this is effected by the agency of insects. In such flowers, _the colours, serts, and honey serve to attract insects,_ while the size and form are arrangedin such a manner that the insects fertilise them with pollen brought from another plant." The _italies_ are mine.
Whilst I am writing I have before me in the garden the white Armu lily (_Armu afrienums_). A few weeks ago its white pollen was eagerly caught for by bees. At the same time the broad beans were in full bloom. These, too, were an attractive foraging-ground for the same insects. Since then the peach-trees have burst into flower, with the result that the first-named is entirely forsaken, and the second receiving only an occasional visit. Have the bees gone to the peach-trees because of their attractive colours? Not a bit of it. While the peaches are in flower so are the willows (_Salire halypolonica_) just throwing out their catkins. The bees are now bringing in pollen of two colours, one creamy white and the other somewhat of an orange tint. I note that in this (Stanmore) district there are roses, marigolds, Arum lilies, and other attractive flowers in full bloom, but few bees are visiting them. The pollen is coming from the willows and peach-trees. There is also honey from the latter. The flowers (catkins) on the willow are so inconspicuous that a large number of people are ignorant of the fact that they are phaneroagmic; yet they are as attractive to the bees as the gaudy peach blooms. A few days ago I visited the Sydney Botanic Gardens. At the time of my visit the most attractive beds of flowers were daisies, pansies, anemones, and the turban ramunculus. Nothing in the Gardens was more showy than these latter, yet no bee visited them. Near was a shrub (_Brnas semperrirens_) in which there was a constant hum. What was the cause? Hidden among the foliage there were some small greenish flowers, supplying abundance of bee food. If colour had been their guiding star they would never have found it in the shrub--they would have searched the ramunculus beds; and there they would have searched in vain. But who will say the attractive _colour_ was not there?
When I found the bees had forsaken the Arum lilies and broad-beans for the peach and willow trees, I tried to induce them to return to the first-named by offering them large bribes. I covered the essential organs of the lily with pure honey; but no bee visited them, and finally the bribe was carried away by ants.
It is more than doubtful if bees are attracted to flowers by their colours. Bees can distinguish colours and objects. The tests supplied by Sir John Lubbock on this point are interesting, but do not go to show that the bees are attracted by the colours in flowers. It says 'bees have played a very important part in the development of flowers." (_Read the whole question on prerians \(\mu^{\prime\prime\prime}\)gr._) "I thought," he says, "'it would be desirable to prove this, if possible, by actual fact.... I brought a bee to some honey which I placed on blue paper, and about 3 feet off I placed a similar quantity of honey on orange paper." [_Nrite_, his experiments were carried out with paper covered with honey, not with flowers.] "The bee carried away a load of honey and returned to the same blue paper twice." Ile then transposed the papers, and she made three more visits to the same coloured paper. On the following day he again transposed the colours. The bee "returned to the old place, and was just going to alight, but observing the change of colours, without a moment's hesitation darted off to the blue. No one who saw her at that moment could have entertained the slightest doubt about her perceiving the difference between the two colours." Yes; because she had learned it was the blue paper that gave her food. The bee was working by sight, exactly upon the same lines as the highly intellectual man acts. If there be two cupboards or safes of two different colours in a room - a blue one containing his food, and an orange one his papers--if their positions are frequently changed he goes into the room and looks for the one, by its colour, that contains the food or papers he may require; but if he had been accustomed to find the blue safe in the room in the same position, he would enter the room and would be about to open it. "but observing the change of colours, without a moment's hesitation." he too would "dart off to the blue," and "no one who saw him at that moment could entertain the slightest doubt about his perceiving the difference between the two colours" of the safes. It was not the colour that attracted the bee; it was the food. Notwithstanding the transpositions of colour, as soon as all the honey had been used up, the orange or other colour would have been just as attractive if bee food were placed on it.
On one occasion I saw a bunch of flowers that had been brought from a distance thrown out on a rubbish heap. It was early spring, and at the time bee food was very scarce, especially pollen. There was a good store of honey within the hives; there was also young brood; therefore, pollen was needed. As soon as the bees saw these discarded blooms many of them were "just going to alight," but observing there was no food they hastened off to the inconspicuous flowers of the conch grass, upon which they had been at work for several days, because there was nothing else at that time supplying them with pollen that was so essential for the young brood.
In "The Story of the Plants," Grant Allen says, "The use of the corolla with its brilliant petals, is to attract insects to the flowers and induce them to carry pollen from plant to plant. That is why they are painted red and blue and yellow ; they are there as advertisements to tell the bec or butterfly, "There you can get get good honey"! If the brilliant coloured petal of flowers are so attractive to bees, how is it the single blooms are more attractive to them than double ones of the same variety and species having the same colour! Here is the answer : The single ones produce pollen which is the all-essential food supply for the young bees, but truly double blooms produce no anthers, therefore they produce no pollen. Where bees can get the greatest supply of food in the shortest space of time is the place where they will go. They do not care what colour the corolla is, it may be "painted red, blue, or yellow." the pollen and honey are the advertisements. Neither do they care what colour the pollen is, because they carry home white, yellow, and red pollen indiscriminately, but only one colour at the same time. The cells in the combs that are packed with pollen contain any colour they can get. Food is the advertisement, and not the colour in the corolla or the petals.
In some of our most ornamental plants the flowers are so inconspicuous were it not for their foliage they would be treated as weeds and routed out. The brilliant foliage is their only recommendation. The carpet beds in our Botanical Gardens during summer are one of the chief attractions to the grounds. They are nothing but leaves. There is no denying their brilliancy. Watch as long as your patience will permit, you will never see pollen or honey-feeding insects alight on them for the purpose of obtaining food. If the clipping or trimming of these carpet beds be neglected, and the tiny flowers be permitted to expand, you will at once see bees and other insects alighting for grains of pollen and sips of honey.
The caladinum and the colens have foliage far more showy than the blooms of scores of plants that are constantly visited by bees, but bright as the foliage may be, the bees are not attracted thereby. When the colens throws up its spike of pale blue flowers then it becomes attractive to insects, and they are drawn to it, not by the colour of the flower or the leaf, but by the food contained in the former.
In the month of September the peach-trees are in full bloom so are the bouquinvilleas. The brilliant crimson bracts of the latter, with their small creamy-white flowers, are equally as attractive in colour as the peach-trees, yet where one bee visits the latter a thousand will visit the former.
The manufacturing of artificial flowers has become so perfect of late, and the imitations are so much like natural flowers that when placed amongst natural foliage, the experienced eye of the florist frequently fails to detect the fraud. Even if it be a honey or pollen bearing imitation _bess_ are not deceived thereby. If the colour of the flowers or their forms are the advertisements telling them where they could get honey, how is it that bees and other insects are not swarming on the head-dresses of the fashionably attired ladies of to-day? No one can deny that these artificial flowers are as perfect both in form and colour to the sight as the natural ones they are meant to represent, only their essentials of reproduction are absent. The food bees require is wanting, and food, and food alone, is the only advertisement that will induce the bee to search for sustenance even in natural blooms. Their natural intelligence and generations of education have taught them the true sources of wealth. Bees will no more search colours in the expectation of getting food than a gold-miner would go fos-sicking in a coal-pit for gold.
Botanists and entomologists speak of bees as one of the highest types of insects, and Grant Allen, in ''The Story of the Plant,'' speaks of them thus :--''These higher insects... are the safest fertilisers because they have legs and a proboscis exactly adapted to the work they are meant for; and they have also, as a rule, a taste of red, blue, and purple flowers, rather than for simple white or yellow ones. Hence, the blossoms that especially lay themselves out for the higher insects are almost always 'blue or purple.''
Darwin, in ''Self-fertilisation of Plants,'' says :--''Not only do the bright colours of flowers serve to attract insects, but dark-coloured streaks and marks are often present, which Sprengel long ago maintained serve as guides to the nectery,'' and ''that the coloured corolla is the chief guide cannot be doubted.'' The native daphne (_Pittsporum undulation_) flower has a creamy corolla hidden amongst its deep green foliage. These trees, both in the Botanic and in private gardens, were in bloom at the same time as the double-flowered peach. In the former the bees were in swarms busily at work, and only an odd bee occasionally visited the latter, and the flowers visited were those containing a few scattered anthers from whence they could scrap together a few grains of pollen. The bright blooms of the double-flowered peach could be seen hundreds of yards away, but to discover the flowers on the pittsporum you need stand underneath the tree. There is no flower in this State more frequently visited by bees than the simple white or creamy yellow eucalyptus bloom. It is the beckeeper's most important source of profit.
Again, we are told that markings on certain flowers are fingerposts. "The lines or spots so often found on the petals of highly-developed flowers," says the author of "The Story of the Plants," "act as honey-guides to lead the bee or other fertilising insect direct to the nectery"; he then goes on to describe the "so-called nasturium." The upper pair (of petals) are broad and deep-lined with dark veins which all converge about the mouth of the spur, and so show the inquiring insect exactly where to go in search of honey. The lower three on the other hand, have no lines or markings, but possess a curious sort of fence running right across the face, intended to prevent other flying insects from alighting and rifling the flower without fertilising it." The nasturium is bi-sexual (one of those whose stannens develop before the pistil), which is said to be the reason the nectery is situated so far down the spur. In most bi-sexual flowers, in those where the stannens are first to develop, and also in those where the pistil first comes to maturity, the nectery is _not_ situated low down, and so far as we know bees find no difficulty in fertilising them. Such flowers, _i.e._, those whose nectaries are easily accessible, however, produce plenty of seed. How bees must be baffled when they visit unicolour flowers?
What a waste of time it must be for insects to discover the nectery where Nature has been so remiss as not to put up guide posts. In the wild nasturtium of India the two upper petals have these "guide posts," but the three lower ones have not. The cultivated descendants of these have altered wonderfully in their shades of colours and markings. Now before me, I have some blooms that are like the originals, only the three lower petals have markings. The markings on the two upper ones are brick-colour, and in form like the broad-arrow, the apex pointing towards the nectery. The marking on the lower petals are somewhat similar, only the apex points outwards. In blooms of such character are bees much perplexed to discover the nectery! 1 have also before me a nasturtium unicolour, a pale sulphur-yellow, yet when in the garden I saw the bees were never at a loss which way to turn to find the nectery, and this flower was visited as regularly as those of brighter colours, and most pronounced markings. George Massee, in 'The Plant World,' says 'that the only use of colour in the flower is that of an advertisement indicating their presence to insects.' When stannens lose their character as such, and become petals, the intensity of colour increases and it becomes more attractive to the eye; nevertheless, the more double a flower becomes the less it is attractive to insects.
Mr. R. T. Baker, Curator, Technical Museum, informs me that when botanising in the mountainous districts of New South Wales, near a garden filled with gorgeous-coloured flowers, he observed a specimen of _Prunner sandwictilins_, the small, inconspicuous flowers of which were literally swarming with bees in quest of honey and pollen; and those brightly-coloured blooms in the garden were in nearly every case passed over by the bees for the purpose of visiting the specimen named.
Some of the writers I have referred to have given their experience of watching bees searching for the nectery, and the insects' apparent failure to discover it at first sight. When bees are seen searching about the essential organs of flowers it is not the nectery they are in search of, but the gyrations they make are for the purpose of collecting the grains of pollen. If a bee is seen at work on a sunflower or other composite bloom, her movements in gathering pollen differ greatly from those in collecting honey. Every leg is brought into play in the former work, and her motions are as systematic and various as the figures in a country dance. How differently she goes to work in collecting honey. Her head bends towards every expanded flower, and her tongue is thrust into every nectery. At some she pauses momentarily--some insect has been there before her; at others her stay is longer; she has her reward.
Notwithstanding an insect may have rilled the nectery of its honey, and when visited by the bee found to be empty, in a few minutes another or the same bee will revisit it, and this time her stay may be longer, because between the two visits the nectery will have secreted another supply. The indecision of the bee at a flower is no proof that she is looking for the position of the nectery.
To-day bees may be industriously at work upon a flower of certain colour, and to-narrow forsake it for one of less conspicuous shade. '1t would appear,' says Darwin, 'that either the taste or the odour of the nectery of certain flowers is unattractive to hive-bees, or to bundle-bees, or to both, for there seems no reason why certain open flowers which secrete nectar are not visited by both. The small quantity of nectar secreted by some of these flowers can hardly be the cause of their neglect, as live-bees search eagerly for the minute drops on the glands of the leaves of the _Primus lunrocerans_."
'The small quantity of honey secreted' is the cause. Within a near radius there were, undoubtedly, flowers that were secreting larger quantities of honey, and both humble and live-bees always visit flowers where they can gather the greatest quantity in the shortest space of time. When the live-bees were searching 'eagerly for the minute drops on the glands of the leaves of the _Primus lunrocerans_," the honey flow must have been scarce elsewhere. I have seen bees, in time of a honey famine search the most unlikely places in the hope of getting something to take home. 'A drowing man will catch at a straw," and a bee on short allowance will search anything and anywhere to keep the cupboard full.
Some years ago, at Cooma, in a dry season, a bed of turnips ran to flower. They were sown on a sandy, thirsty soil. For three or four days they were beseiged by bees. Almost suddenly the bees ceased to visit the turnip blooms, although they were still expanding. The cause of their forsaking the turnips became evident. About one-third of a mile away, on the banks of a Creek, a small paddock of lucerne had flowered, and the bees were bestowing their attention on it, because it was yielding a greater supply of food. Their harvest from the lucerne lasted but a day or so. The scythe stopped the honey flow, and the bees returned to the turnips. Was it the dark-blue flower of the lucerne that caused the bees to forsake the creamy yellow flower of the turnip, or the superior quantity of honey contained in the lucerne? Undobtledly the latter. The whole family of trefoils are well known to be great honey-producers.
Whatever may have been the reason for plants to have brightly-coloured flowers, and to be otherwise decorated so as to attract insects to aid in the work of the development of the vegetable world in past ages, it is evident in these latter times the bees at least have been sufficiently educated to go without leading strings, and have kicked over the traces, and now work according to their own sweet will, or a Iligher One.
Darwin himself is not quite sure that the colours and markings of flowers in every case are for the sole purpose of attracting bees.
the Old World that were introduced here at about the same time as the bee. These highly-coloured flowers and the hive-bee, as far as Australia is concerned, are coeval. **Untold** generations of them had learned to work these blooms, we are informed, and their experience had greatly aided in the development of species and the production of showy flowers of the land of our fathers. On the introduction of the bees and the flowers referred to, the former appear to have suddenly turned their attention from the latter, and apprenticed themselves to the work of attending to the whitish native honey-bearing flowers of the Colony--a colour that the writers on the subject say the bees studiously avoid for the more gorgeously-coloured ones their progenitors had been at such pains to produce by erecting those bright-coloured signs for the benefit of the bees of to-day, for the purpose of saving them both time and labour. Nevertheless, the hive bees, when introduced here, after having been educated to the highest standard in the recognition of colours they are said to possess in Europe, have started _de novo_, and worked upon, not our introduced ornamental flowers, nor our showy blooms of "red, blue, and purple," but upon "simpie white or yellow ones"; so unlike the education in colours they had received in the other side of the world. Question--Will our eucalypt and acacias, and other white and yellow flora, in ages to come, develop highly-coloured flowers and of a larger size than at present, and will the bees then forsake the colours they now work upon in the same way they are said to have done in the other parts of the world? It is queer bees should have gone back in their tastes for colours when they crossed the equator in coming to this side of the world.
Some years ago a series of questions were submitted by the Department of Agriculture to the bee-keepers of this State, relative to what plants were visited by bees as regards size and colour of blooms.
In the ranks of the bee-keepers are men of keen observation as to whence honey flow comes. The whole of the answers given are full of interest. Of course, the imported fruit-trees and other exotic flowering plants are named as giving the spring supply of pollen and honey, but the ironbark, grey gum, bloodwood, blue guns, and the eucalyptus generally are by far the most remarkable as honey-yielding, and all these have white flowers. In the northern districts, the broad and narrow-leaved tea-tree is stated "to be the largest honey-yielder we have"; therefore its _white_
## Chapter 3 The colour of flowers and its influence on Bee-Life.
(Read before the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Tuesday, 11 January, 1898.)
The subject that I have chosen for this paper may not, at first sight, appear to be one so fraught with interest as those you have already listened to. That it is in any way directly associated with agriculture may appear somewhat doubtful. Indeed, the title itself is not a very happy one. The matter that I intend to weave into it, both in warp and woof, may not produce a fabric wholly consistent with the _colour_ of flowers and its influence on bee-life.
I am dealing somewhat with the essential organs of certain plants, and the agents employed in their reproduction; and I think as I proceed I shall be able to show that bee-life and blossoms are so closely associated the one with the other that to injuriously interfere with either will at the same time militate against both. Animal life--our life--cannot exist without the vegetable kingdom, but some members of the latter can live and propagate themselves without the former; whilst there are other forms of vegetable life which would cease to exist if all animal organisms were excluded from them indeed, scune forms of insect life are an absolute necessity in the reproduction of plants. I know that amongst phaneroganic plants there are those that are anemophilons and other that are entomophalous. The former can continue to multiply without insect aid, but with the latter insects are an imperative necessity. Nearly all insects, more or less, aid in the fertilising of the vegetable kingdom, but the ravages with the foliage caused by some classes of insects far more than counterbalance the good that they may do.
Pollen is the fertilising and vitalising agent in reproducing and perpetuating all classes of vegetables. It is produced in abundance by all flowering plants, both by those of conspicuous and also those of inconspicuous flowers or blossoms. As a rule inconspicuous flowers are anemophilous, and those of more gaudy tints are sought after by insects. It may not be universally understoodthat there are male and female elements in the vegetable organisms just as in the animal organism. We know that if the sexes in the latter are always excluded, the one from the other, reproduction is an utter impossibility.