bee violet

English

Noun

bee violet (countable and uncountable, plural bee violets)

1. A color visible to bees that has a frequency of about 400 mμ, spanning a portion of the spectrum that covers violet blue through the lower frequencies of the ultraviolet range.
   • 2010, Martha Scott, Honey Bee, Where Are You?:

     Karl von Frisch discovered that honey bees can see six colors—blue, blue-green, yellow, bee purple, ultraviolet, and bee violet.

   • 2013, Arthur C. Giese, Photophysiology, page 79:

     To a bee, it is a carelessly formed, perhaps Impressionistic world in which movement carries great meaning and in which the richness of color is extended to endow two flowers, each an insipid white to us, with radically different shades of "bee-violet."

Related terms

• bee purple