It turns out that bees like coffee just as much as humans do.
New research reveals that coffee improves honeybees’ memories, helping them remember certain floral scents.
The study, led by Dr. Geraldine Wright, reader in neuroethology at Newcastle University in the UK, observed bees feeding on a sugary, caffeinated solution. Caffeine is naturally present in coffee and citrus flowers. The researchers found that the bees feeding on the caffeine solution were three times better at remembering a flower’s scent than the bees feeding on only sugar.
“Remembering floral traits is difficult for bees to perform at a fast pace as they fly from flower to flower, and we have found that caffeine helps the bee remember where the flowers are,” Dr. Wright told Phys Org. “In turn, bees that have fed on caffeine-laced nectar are laden with coffee pollen and these bees search for other coffee plants to find more nectar, leading to better pollination. So, caffeine in nectar is likely to improve the bee’s foraging prowess while providing the plant with a more faithful pollinator.”
At first, the bees’ affinity for the caffeinated solution puzzled the researchers. Why would a nectar-seeking insect go for a bitter taste like caffeine?
“Caffeine is a defence chemical in plants and tastes bitter to many insects including bees so we were surprised to find it in the nectar,” said Professor Phil Stevenson of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the University of Greenwich’s Natural Resources Institute, UK. “However, it occurs at a dose that’s too low for the bees to taste but high enough to affect bee behavior.”
The effect of the caffeine worked on long term memory too. After ingesting the caffeine solution, three times as many bees remembered the floral scent after 24 hours as those that didn’t, and after three days, twice as many remembered the scent.
