Can bees see colors inquiry

1. Can bees see colors inquiry What is the adaptive advantage of color vision?

2. Hypotheses • Bees cannot see blue • Bees cannot see green • Bees cannot see yellow • Bees cannot see red

3. Protocol • Place a patchwork of colored squares. Cover the squares with a glass plate. Place a dish of unscented sugar syrup (25%) on one color. Place empty dishes on the other squares. After bees regularly visit the syrup laden dish, rearrange the colored squares and place empty dishes on each square.

5. Data collection • Before collecting data, clean the glass plate and all dishes to be certain that scent is not a factor • Return the patchwork grid and empty dishes to the original location • Count the bees that land on each colored square for 10 minutes • Have students repeat the experiment 3 for each color they want to test

6. Reporting findings • Plot results for each trial as a histogram • Ask students what the results suggest about their hypothesis • Encourage students to speculate about how honey bees might benefit from color vision

7. Conclusions • Bees have color vision • Bees can see green, blue and yellow • Bees cannot distinguish red from black • This experiment will not show another important aspect of bee vision – that bees can see ultraviolet

8. Humans cannot see ultraviolet Bees can see ultraviolet, but cannot see red