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How (and What) Do Bees See?


By Paul James

Last weekend, while planting what will likely wind up being way too much okra for Carrie and me, I couldn’t help but notice honeybees and bumblebees buzzing around my garden in search of nectar and pollen. As I watched them travel from plant to plant — stopping at some but ignoring others — I couldn’t help but wonder how a bee’s-eye view of the world is different from our own. More specifically, I wondered how and what bees see?

Human eyes are trichromatic, meaning that we have three receptors in our eyes that enable us to see red, green, and blue, as well as combinations of those three colors, including orange, yellow, indigo, and violet. Scientists say we can discern as many as 7 million different colors. However, we can’t see ultraviolet light.

Bee eyes are trichromatic as well, enabling them to see blue, green, and purple (and their many combinations). But they can also see ultraviolet light, and therein lies the big difference between what they see and what we see, because it means bees see the world in a different light. Literally.

Flowers reflect lots of ultraviolet light, which makes them appear extremely bright against their surroundings. That enables bees to see patterns and unique details on flowers that are invisible to us, and they use those patterns to identify landing sites for nectar-rich petals. Ultraviolet light also makes the color red, which bees can’t see, appear as nearly black and with distinctive patterns that bees recognize as a good thing. So although bees can’t see red, they nevertheless are attracted to red flowers.

Bees can also see polarized light (humans can’t) and that too enables them to identify patterns in flowers. It also allows them to navigate with tremendous accuracy even on cloudy days.

And how do bees see us? Well, their visual acuity is pretty lame compared to ours, roughly 100 times worse. So to bees, human faces are just really strange looking flowers.

So if you want to attract more bees to your garden, the simple solution is to plant brightly colored flowers, especially blue ones, which appear to be a bee’s favorite color. Mine too.

Happy gardening, ya’ll. Holler if you need any okra.