Word: beeing
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...each hive commune, says Dr. von Frisch, a few bees are honey scouts. They patrol the neighborhood looking for new-opened flowers. Their big, compound eyes see well, but they do not see what human eyes see. Blind to red, a bee sees a clear red flower as grey. But at the other end of its color spectrum, a bee can see ultraviolet, to which human eyes are blind...
...scout bee cannot smell flowers at any great distance; its odor perception is about as sharp as a man's. But when it alights on a flower to which it has been attracted by sight, it is so close to the flower's scent glands that very faint odors are perceptible. Most flowers have "scent spots," which the bee feels out with the organs of smell on its antennae. The scent spots lead the scout to the cups where the nectar lies...
Glad Tidings. There the bee unlimbers its sense of taste, which is specialized to test the quality of nectar. A sugar content of 5% does not interest a bee; such nectar would spoil in the hive before it could be concentrated into long-keeping honey. A 20% sugar content is satisfactory, and 40% makes the bee wildly enthusiastic. It sucks up some nectar and marks the flower with its own scent from a gland on its abdomen. Having thus staked a claim, it heads back to the hive to spread the glad news...
...does it tell and what does it tell? By elaborate experiments over many years, Dr. von Frisch deciphered some phases of bee language. A scout bee, he says, can tell its fellows what kind of flower contains the honey-trove, in what direction it lies, and how far away...
When the scout bee enters the hive, he says, it climbs to a section of comb and starts a stylized dance. Other bees gather around, caressing the scout with their touch-and-smell antennae. The scout bee's odor, picked up from the flower it has robbed, tells them what sort of flower they should look...