A Caffeine Buzz Helps Bees Learn to Find Specific Flowers
Published:02 Aug.2021    Source:Cell Press

There's nothing like a shot of espresso when you need to get some studying done -- and now, it seems like bees learn better with a jolt of their favorite caffeine-laced nectar, too. In a paper published July 28 in the journal Current Biology, researchers have shown that feeding bumble bees caffeine helps them better remember the smell of a specific flower with nectar inside. While previous studies have shown that bees like caffeine and will more frequently visit caffeinated flowers to get it, this is the first study to show that consuming caffeine in their nest actually helps bees find certain flowers outside of the nest.

 
"When you give bees caffeine, they don't do anything like fly in loops, but do seem to be more motivated and more efficient," says Sarah Arnold, a researcher at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich in the UK. "We wanted to see if providing caffeine would help their brains create a positive association between a certain flower odor and a sugar reward."