So far, I have obtained observations on three different outings. Each time I have observed 5 reps of the 4 flower colours obtain 20 observations per site visit and a total of 60 observations so far or 15 per flower colour. I have not had any real problems executing my sample strategy aside from the fact that my study site is a popular public location, so when I go to record observations, particularly on the weekend, it can be quite busy. It hasn’t had too much of an impact though other than sometimes being slightly distracting or having being occupying the space that I am trying to make observations in. Mostly it’s nice seeing how many people get out to enjoy the garden on the weekend!
Before my observations today, I would have said that my hypothesis seemed to be fairly accurate and my observations were tending to support it. However, today I noticed something quite interesting. There was a specific kind of flower that had both pink and white phenotypes that were in different locations in the garden and by chance I observed them both today. Following my hypothesis, I would have expected to see more visits on the pink flowers than the white ones but they actually had a similar number of visits and were both fairly attractive to bees. I still think my data may end up supporting my hypothesis, but as I also would have expected, what attracts bees to certain flowers is much more complex than the flowers colour.