I agree that plastic is a good material to use, particularly a smooth plastic that is easy to clean to remove the cuticular hydrocarbons or other odors that bees may deposit on them. It will be important to make sure that the colors you are using are actually visible to your bees (for example, see Lunau et al, 2011, JEB, 214: 1607-1612). (If you have a problem obtaining this article, let me know.) To really ensure that your artificial flowers are mimicking the real thing, you will need to measure their spectral reflectance and also consider the kind of illumination that bees will experience when viewing natural flowers. Because bees generally have excellent associative learning, the realistic 3D shape of the flower has generally been less emphasized by researchers studying bee color learning. Thus, a flat plastic "flower" receiving even illumination and uniformly colored may be sufficient for your purposes.

According to my experience with bees the material is less important if you use UV bright paint. We have used such painting to catch bees with pantraps. It worked fine. See the details in: Westphal C., Bommarco R., Lamborn E., Petanidou T., Potts S. G., Roberts S.P.M., Szentgyörgyi H., Vaissière B.E, Woyciechowski M., Steffan-Dewenter I., 2008, Measuring bee biodiversity in different habitats and biogeographic regions, Ecological Monographs, 78(4): 653–671 Good luck, Hajnalka

I've used simple coloured paper for Melipona-bees which worked fine. Glossy photo-type paper was easier to use because it is a bit more water resistant and doesn't rip as easily. Plastic also worked fine. Good luck! Margriet

I have seen artificial flowers that mimic the shape of a flower using wire for the stem and plastic that was sprayed with UV light for the petals. I agree with Hajnalka, I think the UV paint in the key. For my masters I used products from www.uvgear.co.uk Hope that helps!

Thanks a lot.

I agree that plastic is a good material to use, particularly a smooth plastic that is easy to clean to remove the cuticular hydrocarbons or other odors that bees may deposit on them. It will be important to make sure that the colors you are using are actually visible to your bees (for example, see Lunau et al, 2011, JEB, 214: 1607-1612). (If you have a problem obtaining this article, let me know.) To really ensure that your artificial flowers are mimicking the real thing, you will need to measure their spectral reflectance and also consider the kind of illumination that bees will experience when viewing natural flowers. Because bees generally have excellent associative learning, the realistic 3D shape of the flower has generally been less emphasized by researchers studying bee color learning. Thus, a flat plastic "flower" receiving even illumination and uniformly colored may be sufficient for your purposes.

As some have said before, bees don't see the same spectrum as us. UV is a important wavelength that provide a road map to the stamen of the flower. So, traditional human colors may make no difference.

A agree with James that plastic is probably the best choice. We used plastic overhead transparencies (Xerox T-type B) for floral parts. These artificial flowers were painted with acrylic water-based colours. It worked quite well in a Tabanid fly mimicry system (Jersáková, J. Jürgens, A., Šmilauer, P., Johnson, S.D. (2012). The evolution of floral mimicry: identifying traits that visually attract pollinators. Functional Ecology 26, 1381–1389) . In the paper you can also see that, using a colour spectrometer, the artificial flowers and the real flowers were very similar in their colour spectral reflectance. Furthermore if you transparent plastic overheads you get the effect that the artificial flowers are translucent like real flower petals (see figure in the paper cited above). I think, and agree with James on this point, that the 3D shape is probably an important feature that can help bees (or in our case flies) to find the flower entrance. Another advantage using plastic flowers is that they are more robust . Since you are working with bees you probably need UV-bright paint as suggested by Hajnalka. Hope that Helps!

Male Euglossini bees are attracted by artificial aromatic substances (like Eucalypto oil). I am thinking of using EVA paper discs of different colors impregnated with the attractant. In my pilot studies the EVA paper worked fine. Any sugestion my friends?

In the following paper you may learn about successful artificial flowers for behavioural tests: Lunau, K., Papiorek, S., Eltz, T., Sazima, M. (2011): Avoidance of achromatic colours by bees provides a private niche for hummingbirds. J. Exp. Biol. 214: 1607-1612.

However, for pretraining you might prefer a material which can be cleaned with water.

You may ask for more advice my coauthor Sarah Papiorek who did the training experiments with euglossine bees.

Best wishes Klaus

That's an easy one try using baize, ha ha kidding.

I don't think material is very important. a few years ago I saw this video on youtube about the way bees communicate to help others locate food and they simply used plastic plates in blue, green and yellow, I think... Hope it was helpful.

When you want to manipulate the ultraviolet reflection properties you should us UV-reflective colours and combine it with Uv-transmittant and UV-absorbing foils. You can easily clean the foils covering the colour targets. We did this succcessfully using uv-reflective bird feathers. You can read more aout this method in our paper: Lunau, K., Papiorek, S., Eltz, T., Sazima, M. (2011): Avoidance of achromatic colours by bees provides a private niche for hummingbirds. J. Exp. Biol. 214: 1607-1612.

Klaus

Klaus

I only have tried honey bees. But if odours play a major role, you want something cheap, so that you can have tens of them to swap between tests. I guess these bees also like bright colours in flowery shapes, with clear guidance to a source of reward. I would make it that it does not resemble any naturally occurring flower in the same period. Big dots in circular shapes and smaller different colours dots closer to a food source, with a scent. You may have honey bees taking over if you give strong sugar reward.