The Floral Reflectance Database (FReD) was created by researchers at Imperial College London and Queen Mary, University of London. Now researchers are being offered a glimpse of how bees may see flowers in all their ultra-violet (UV) glory.

Users of the database can then calculate how these plants appear to different pollinating insects, based on studies of what different parts of the spectrum different species see.

"This research highlights that the world we see is not the physical or the 'real' world - different animals have very different senses, depending on the environment the animals operate in," said Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

"Every third bite that you consume at the dinner table is the result of insect pollinators' work. In order to utilise insects for commercial pollination purposes, we need to understand how insects see flowers," said Professor Chittka.

"We need to understand what kind of a light climate we need to generate in commercial glass houses to facilitate detection of flowers by bees," he said.

(Source: Database shows how bees see world in UV [BBC])