Do "white" and "green" look the same to a bee?

The hexagon model of color vision predicts that white flowers which reflect ultraviolet light resemble green foliage to a bee's eye, whereas, accordin g to other models of the bee color vision, UV-reflecting white is discrimin able from foliage green. The hexagon model is widely used in ecologically a nd evolutionary oriented literature, and the pre dieted similarity between white and green has been recently presented as a well established fact (Was er and Chittka 1998). We show that bees detect UV-reflecting white objects presented on a green background, a finding that is in disagreement with the predictions of the hexagon model.