Bees Get a Buzz from Caffeine

Caffeine-laced nectar improves pollinators' memory.

Humans aren鈥檛 the only ones who like a caffeine hit. do, too, suggests a recent in Science.

Caffeine occurs naturally in the nectar of plants and citrus trees, in concentrations too low to turn the taste bitter but high enough to lure bees鈥攚hich remember the source and go back for more.

Newcastle University researchers taught hundreds of the insects to react to certain scent triggers聽(like Pavlov and his dogs), then analyzed their behavior.

鈥淚f they鈥檙e just being trained with sucrose, they don鈥檛 remember the scent very well the next day,鈥 says lead researcher Geraldine Wright. 鈥淲hen we spiked the reward with the amount of caffeine found in nectar, they were able to remember鈥 the drug-laced scent for up to three days.

Some plants ward off hungry herbivores with like caffeine or nicotine, but in this case, 鈥渁 plant is using one of these compounds to manipulate the animals to its own benefit.鈥

The situation appears to be a win-win: The flowers retain a faithful pollinator, and the bees know where they can find their fix鈥攌ind of like a Starbucks for honeybees.