All animals

How does a bee see the world?

Sees ultraviolet, but is blind to red.

A meadow of red, yellow, white and purple wildflowers under a blue skyHuman vision
A meadow of red, yellow, white and purple wildflowers under a blue sky, as it would appear to a beeBee vision

Reds fall away into black; the UV-marked petals light up instead.

What's going on

Bees trade the red end of the spectrum for ultraviolet. Flowers carry UV 'landing stripes' invisible to us, while reds sink towards black - which is why bee-pollinated flowers are usually blue, purple or yellow. The softness is real too: a compound eye's mosaic of thousands of tiny lenses has a fraction of our resolution, so a bee's world is colour-rich but detail-poor. And what you see here is an impression: UV genuinely cannot be shown on a screen.

Field of view

You: ~190°

Bee: ~280°

Approximate horizontal field of view, seen from above. The dot is the head.

You vs the bee

Low-light visionYou win
You
Bee
Fine detailYou win
You
Bee
Colour rangeBee wins
You
Bee
Motion detectionBee wins
You
Bee