Bees Get a Buzz from Caffeine Filled Nectar, Makes Them Pollinate Better

Ever wondered how bees get all that energy to fly around from flower to flower, pollinating as they go along? A new study shows that some flowers -coffee and citrus flowers - contain caffeine which gives honeybees a memory boost and improves their pollination skills.

Researchers fed bees a sugar solution which was caffeinated nectar and found they were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than bees which consumed the sugar alone. The study, published Thursday in journal Science, found that the caffeine supplied an edge, boosting the bees' long-term memory.

"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," study leader Geraldine Wright, a neuroethologist at Newcastle University, UK, said in a statement

"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," Wright added.

Compared with bees trained on sugar water alone, bees trained on sugar water doped with caffeine were three times as likely to remember 24 hours later that the floral scent came with a reward. After 72 hours, the caffeine-trained bees were twice as likely to remember the scent-reward connection.

There are naturally occurring low-levels of caffeine in the flowers of tangerine and sweet orange had the lowest concentration, while the flowers of Coffea canephora contained roughly the same concentration as a cup of instant coffee. 

In humans, caffeine has been shown to affect the hippocampus, circuits in the brain's memory center. The study showed that cells in the brains of insects are similar to neurons in the hippocampus. Researchers then tracked the electrical activity of honeybee brains who had consumed the caffeine solution and found a visible effect on the brain cells' activity.

While also noted in the study that while there is no evidence showing whether bees get jittery from the caffeine withdrawal, but Wright said he is now exploring whether bees may get addicted to caffeine.