A study in scientific journal Nature reveals certain flowers’ remarkable ability to produce a blue halo that draws bees in. Bees are attracted to the colour blue, but most flowers do not have any of the colour in their petals.
To attract bees for pollination purposes, some flowers create a blue circle around their centre when the sun reaches the minuscule ridges in their surface, reports AP. The sunlight reflects off the ridges and produces a circle of blue light that can be seen across the flowers’ pigmented areas.
Edwige Moyroud of Cambridge University in England says that the skill of making halos is very uncommon. Daisies, peonies and tulips are some of the species that can perform the trick.
The study used fake flowers to prove that bumble bees can see, and are attracted to, the blue halo. Scientists are now working to determine which other insects will be drawn in by the trick.
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