Favourite colour aids bee food hunt

A bee’s favourite colour can help it to find more food from the flowers in its environment, according to research.

Dr Nigel Raine and Professor Lars Chitka from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, studied nine bumblebee colonies from southern Germany and found that the colonies that favoured purple blooms were more successful foragers.

The team’s findings, which will be published online in Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, suggest that bumblebees have developed their favourite colour over time, to coincide with the most profitable, nectar-rich flowers available.

It has been long accepted that animals show an innate preference when selecting a mate, but little research has been carried out on how such sensory biases affect foraging habits.

The researchers believe their work could have implications for other species.

Dr Raine said: “In the area we studied, violet flowers produced the most nectar, far more than the next most rewarding flower colour (blue).

“Inexperienced bees are known to have strong colour preferences so we investigated whether the bumblebee colonies with a stronger preference for violet flowers foraged more successfully in their local flora.”

The team first observed the colour preferences of naive bees - those which had never before seen flowers - using violet (bee UV-blue) and blue (bee blue) artificial flowers in the laboratory.

They then observed the rate at which bees from the same colonies collected nectar from real flowers in the wild.

The results showed that the colonies which preferred violet to blue flowers in the laboratory harvested more nectar from real flowers under field conditions.

In fact the colony with the strongest preference for violet (over blue) brought in 41% more nectar than the colony with the least strong bias.

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