Bees like it hot and seek warm colours in plants Wednesday August 2, 06:46 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - Bumblebees like it hot and learn to use the colour of plants to select blooms with the warmest nectar, scientists said on Wednesday.
Through trial and error, bumblebees learn which flowers are the hot spots which offer an additional reward in the form of heat or energy for the pollinating insects.
When researchers at Queen Mary, University of London used four different coloured artificial flowers with varying temperatures, the majority of the bees selected the darker coloured, warmer flowers.
Even when the colours and temperatures were switched, the bees still preferred the warmer blooms.
"What the bees appear to be doing is a bit like us drinking a hot drink on a cold day. If you need to warm up, you can produce your own heat, at the expense of some of your energy reserves - or you can consume a warm drink, and save on investing in your own energy," said Professor Lars Chittka, who headed the research team.
"The interesting thing is that bees don't just prefer the warmer drinks - they learn to predict the flower temperature from the flower colour," he added in the statement.
Chittka and his team believe the findings, which are reported in the journal Nature, show that flower temperature offers an additional reward for the bees.
"We conclude that the bees preferred to land on the warmer flowers, even though the similarly coloured alternative contained the same nutritional reward," the researchers said in the journal.



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Isn't the article interesting? What lessons can we draw from this?
What do bumblebees represent? Can they teach us a lesson in life? Are we similar to bumblebees? Do they have traits like us humans?

I wonder............