Drinking coffee, whose main active ingredient is caffeine, not only makes us feel good but is also believed to improve one’s memory. It now appears that the same may hold true for honey bees as well.
A study has found that honeybees fed with nectar containing caffeine were three times more likely to remember a flower’s scent than those feeding on nectar with no caffeine.
It is said that an individual bee tends to focus only on one kind of flower at a time for foraging, and therefore it ought to remember floral traits.
According to the researchers, caffeine had a very great effect on the bees’ long-term memory with three times as many bees remembering the floral scent 24 hours later and twice as many bees remembering the scent after three days.
In plants, caffeine is believed to work as a natural defense system to deter insects and pathogens because of its bitter taste.
However, what the researchers have found is that caffeine occurs naturally in the nectar of coffee, grapefruit, oranges, lemons and pomelo flowers at a dose that’s too low for the bees to taste but high enough to affect bee behavior.
Study leader Geraldine Wright, Reader in Neuroethology at Newcastle University who is of the view that the effect of caffeine benefits both the honeybee and the plant said, “Caffeine in nectar is likely to improve the bee’s foraging prowess while providing the plant with a more faithful pollinator.”
Julie Mustard, a contributor to the study from Arizona State University, said, “Although human and honeybee brains obviously have lots of differences, when you look at the level of cells, proteins and genes, human and bee brains function very similarly. Thus, we can use the honeybee to investigate how caffeine affects our own brains and behaviors.”
by RTT Staff Writer
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