Bees love caffeine, too — and tricky flowers take advantage
Source: Washington Post
Bees love caffeine, too — and tricky flowers take advantage
By Rachel Feltman October 15 at 12:00 PM
It turns out that honeybees can be quite the little caffeine addicts. And just as your local coffee shop takes advantage of your addiction to keep you coming back, flowers with caffeine-laced nectar keep bees buzzing for more.
According to a study published Thursday in Current Biology, this love of caffeine might lead bees to make some poor decisions for their colony.
"If a bee goes to a caffeinated plant, it's still getting nectar -- it's getting a reward, so it's not a complete and total disaster," lead study author Margaret Couvillon of the University of Sussex told The Post.
But it makes them forage less optimally, she explained.
The study was inspired by earlier research, which found that bees exposed to caffeine could learn new flowers more quickly and remember them for longer periods of time. In theory, that would make bees into more efficient pollinators. But Couvillon and her colleagues wanted to test the behavior in the field.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/10/15/bees-love-caffeine-too-and-tricky-flowers-take-advantage/
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