All students benefit from coffee — even ones that don’t need it to get a buzz. Bees, scientists have found, learn better when given a shot of caffeine. Scientists knew from previous studies that bees will regularly return to a flower whose nectar has been laced with caffeine, but they were not sure if this was because the caffeine had helped the bees to learn the flower’s smell or simply because they “craved the caffeine”. SponsoredTo test whether caffeine actually helps bees to learn, researchers trained them to recognise the scent of a strawberry flower and gave them a dose of caffeinated sugar solution. They were then released from their nest and offered a choice between two “robotic flowers”, one that smelt like a strawberry

Source: The Times July 28, 2021 16:07 UTC