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I need a link to a source that discusses shapes that the honey bee can distinguish between. I know they can tell the difference between a circle and a square but not between a square and a diamond.
I am using this information to paint the six entrances to my winter nuc bee house.
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They can also tell the difference between an aoutlined shape and a filled in shape.
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Thanks Terri! I did find one source that had quite a bit of technical detail. I finally decided to use three colors yellow, blue, and a florescent yellowish green. I am hoping the florescent has some ultraviolet properties. The three top entrances are painted square and the bottoms ones are circles.
I am thinking of marking some of the workers to monitor drifting.
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The book by Gould and Gould, "The Honey Bee"
has entire chapter called "Flower Learning"
that contains a wealth of diagrams and
pratical information of what a bee can
distinguish based upon actual stuides
where bees were "tested".
If you look for the paperback version
on http://www.abebooks.com , you will
be able to buy the book for about $5.00.
If you haven't read it, you should.
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Either "The hive and the honey bee" or "ABC and XYZ of beekeeping" I can't remember which has an entire section on this. It looks at which shapes they can recognize from each other. From what I remember the sizes don't matter as much as the shape. Like slashes, triangles, circles, and the number of them. Very interesting subject.
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By the way... you may want to try your public library for those. mine has them
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I had an interesting observation the other day with this bee house. The landing board is one continuous board but is painted the same color as the circle or the square, so the board is painted three different colors. The bees will sometimes hover an inch or two in front of the circle or square before landing. What is really interesting is they may walk down the landing board but will not cross into the other color zone. I have watch the landing board for 4 thirty minutes periods and have yet to see a bee cross the color line. They will go right up to the edge but will not cross. Each zone of the landing board is only eight inches long. Do they ever cross the line? I am sure they do, but I have never seen it.
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Odd indeed. I now remember that it's circles and triangles that they supposedly can't tell the difference between. I wonder if you could paint the whole brood box in half with those colors to see how strongly they would abide by those actions.
At what point would they no longer be overtaken by that color. Probably wouldnt work inside the hive, but maybe reduce their landing area.
Maybe I'm cruel though.
I wonder if they could tell the difference between a 5 and 6 point star or something like that since it sort of revolves around recognizing flower shapes.
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I thought it was squares and triangles?
[This message has been edited by magnet-man (edited November 04, 2004).]
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On the subject of bee vision in reference books the classic example shows two rows of figures.
The upper row contains:
a solid circle,
a solid square,
a solid triangle
a single shape similar to a large slash /
The lower row shows:
a large x,
a diamond outline shape,
four thick vertical lines,
a shape similar to the letter Y.
Bees reportedly can distinguish any figure in the upper row from any figure in the lower row and vice versa. They cannot, according to the books, distinguish between figures in the same row
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Hi there Magnet-man. This is from Bee-L archives. A couple of years ago there was a discussion about colour recognition in honey bees on Bee-L.
From the chapter on vision in Ronald Riband’s “The Behaviour and Social
Life of Honeybees”:
[Koch, P. (1934)] reported that he had kept 28 colonies in one apiary for 14 years, and that during this time the hives had always been painted six different colours. The average honey yields from the differently coloured hives had shown consistent differences, thus: dark blue 48 lb., black 42 lb., brown 40 lb., white 26 lb., light green 22 lb., pink 21 lb. This result indicates that bees had shown a preference for darker-coloured hives and had drifted to these from the others. In Europe, where colonies are usually kept close together in beehouses, the painting of hives is frequently advocated in order to help the bees to identify their own hive; KochÂ’s results demonstrate that this system can have disadvantages.
[This message has been edited by Dick Allen (edited November 04, 2004).]
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Here is a link to some very good remarks about bee vision on Bee-L:
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-...l&F=&S=&P=6386
[This message has been edited by Dick Allen (edited November 05, 2004).]
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Dick,
Where did Dr. Koch keep his apiary? If he was in a cold climate, the colors could affect the heating of the hive (through solar heating). This would also create the effects shown in his results. We know dark colors help the bees in cold climates.
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James Burns
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IÂ’m out on a limb here, but I believe Koch was a German researcher. If not, IÂ’m sure someone in the know will correct me.
These are the colors KochÂ’s bees consistently chose for 14 years:
dark blue
black
brown
white
light green
pink
According to your darker to lighter thinking shouldnÂ’t they have been:
black
dark blue
brown
light green
pink
white
It seems to me IÂ’ve seen elsewhere that bees have a definite preference for the color blue.
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German researcher=Frisch? Or something like that.Early on.
dickm
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Bees are really atracted to Ultra violet. The color we see is the color absorbed by the object. Black reflects the least. So blue would retain more UV than black as it absorbs the blue spectrum. Pink would reflect the most UV and be the brightest of the hive according to the bees.
color list you gave:
dark blue
black
brown
white
light green
pink
So my order thinking using UV reflection would only change the white and green hive. Maybe his green reflected more UV than his white.
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Hillbillynursery, that post is wrong on so many points I'm not sure where to begin.
We know that bees see in the UV range but are they attracted to UV as a moth is attracted to a flame? (Actually, the misconception that moths are attracted to light has been disproved but I'll save that for another time.)
The color we see is from the light not absorbed by an object.
On the next point; The brightness of an object in UV is pretty much independent of the color that we see the object. Our perception of color as best depicted by the color wheel with the three primary colors (red green blue) and all the mixed colors in between does not completely correspond with the color spectrum as depicted by the rainbow (infra-red, red, orange, yellow, green, blue. violet, ultra-violet). You won't find purple (a mix of red and blue) in the rainbow and you won't find UV in the color wheel.
You would think that black and white would always be black and white but the brightness could be reversed in UV. Are you are old enough to remember the adds for laundry detergent that makes your clothes "whiter than white!"? The Borax in the detergent absorbs UV light and retransmits it in the visible spectrum. So your white bee suit if washed with borax would look dark and menacing to a bee. 
[This message has been edited by DanO (edited November 08, 2004).]
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>Pink would reflect the most UV and be the brightest of the hive according to the bees.
If that is the case, it seems to me, bees would be attracted more to pink. Instead it was their least chosen color.
To be honest, you lost me in those remarks about one color reflecting more UV and another color retaining it. Ultraviolet is simply a color. IsnÂ’t it well known that we donÂ’t see UV, and bees donÂ’t see red?
>you won't find UV in the color wheel.
Well, not in the color wheel for humans, but it is in the color wheel for bees.
WeÂ’ve been told to wear light colored clothing around bees. Dark clothing supposedly makes them sting more. Well, I donÂ’t know. I havenÂ’t noticed any difference. I guess this was determined by hanging a black and a white fuzzy ball in front of a hive and then upsetting the hive. More bees stung the black fuzzy ball than the white. Anyway, if you look at the order of color that bees prefer, according to Koch, pink is at the bottom. This information may be useful for you entrepreneurs out there. Think about it. Pink bee suits! Just donÂ’t paint your hives pink if you want any honey. 
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Hillbillynursey's comments triggered a memory. So I researched and found a reference in "The Social Behavior of the Bees" by Charles D. Michener. He said, "Any color discriminated by bees can be made by mixtures of the three wavelenghts: green (530), blue (430), and ultraviolet (340)."
Basically, the color of Koch's hives are not the colors that the bees see. For example, they don't see red. Do they see pink? The color wheel for bees (per von Frisch) says that their white is a combination of any two colors opposite to each other on the wheel. Everything on the wheel for bees is opposite to a color in the ultraviolet that we cannot see. So white, light green, and pink are different colors for them.
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