July 1956 School Magazine

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

July, 1956

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

July, 1956

gradually, like other abilities, in the course of the history of the species. It would be of interest to investigate more primitive social insects to learn whether they have a simpler kind of language which would show us how the complex situation found in honey bees may have developed. Even if the sky is cloudy, bees still indicate by means of the wagging dance the correct direction of the feeding place with reference to the sun's position. Hence they must know where the sun stands in the sky even when it is hidden behind cloud. Bes have a very good memory for time. If one feeds them at a certain place for a few da ys between ten and twelve o 'clock, they visit this place for the next four or five days, from ten to twelve, even .though the food dish is empty. Hence it seems to be a possibiiity that in territory which was known to them my bees might have been aware of the direction in which the sun stood at each hour of the day. On another visit to the bee hive I carried out an experiment to find out which colours bees can see. By the scent of a little honey I was able to attract a small group of bees to a place where I had put some food (sugar) on a piece of blue cardboard. The bee sucked up the food and, after carrying it back to the hive and letting others know of the food source, returned again and again. This continued for two hours and then I took away the blue cardboard scented with the honey and put out two new, clean pieces of cardboard at the site of the former feeding place - on the left a blue card, and on the right a yel- low one. If the bees were able to distinguish between yellow and blue they should have alighted on the blue card. This is exactly what happened, and indicates that bees can distinguish between colours. Bees can not on the other hand see all the colours of the spectrum but only yellow, blue-green and blue. They can how- ever mistake violet and purple for blue and orange and green for yellow. Bees can not see the red end of the spectrum and therefore are not attracted to red flowers unless they have a shade of yellow on them. This is the same for white flowers , e.g., the white flower of Narcissus which has a yellow sap :::pot. The sap spots of flowers are usually scented and ofd the bee in locating the nectar. Flower scents have a specific function with regard to honey bees. When a bee is feeding on a scented flower the odour of ihe flower odheres to the bee's body. The nectar on which the 16

bee is feeding is saturated with that flower's characteristic odour. Thus it is possible for the bees in the hive to perceive the flower scent from the returning forager in two ways . Firstly by holding their antennoe toward the dancer they smell the scent adhering to her body as a result of her contact with the flower. The upper surface of the bee's body has the ability to hold scents for long periods. Secondly during pauses in the dance, the dancer feeds the hive bees by regurgitating a droplet of nectar from her honey stomach. The hive bees can therefore rec(3ive the odour of the flower both from the dancer's body and from the nectar which she passes to them. I was not able to prove these facts however as I did not have the necessary apparatus, but I did prove that scent is an important aid for the foraging worker. I placed a yellow dish containing odourless sugar-water a few yards from the hive and near it a similar yellow dish containing sugar-water scented with honey. A few stray workers fed from the scented solution and a few from the unscented. After returning to their hive and presumably executing their dance, workers returned to the scented food in much greater quantities than to the unscented food. I got great enjoyment from my visits to the hive and from the fulfilment of my simple experiments, a lthough I was stung twice and the experiments demanded a great deal of patience. From my essay you can see that by merely looking at an insect and studying its physical structure we travel only a short dis- tance along the road to understanding nature, while there is a great deal left before us in a series of problems concerning their puzzling habits and behaviour.

K. KORBOOT.

17