Anyone who has trried to drink a can of soda outside or has outdoor garbage cans knows that honeybees seem to sometimes prefer Sprite and Dr. Pepper to tulips and daisies.
But what do bees do with soda? Do they just fly off once they realise it is not nectar. Do they try to drink it? And does Caffeine have any effect if they do take in soda.
And if bees mistake soda for nectar, could they bring it back to the hive and make honey? I imagine if that’s true, honey from an urban hive might taste like Coke, 7-Up, and A&W Root Beer.
The soda is pretty close to nectar, the important point being the sugar content, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they can make the same use of it. They don’t really digest the nectar, so the caffeine and flavorings would not be an issue, at least initially:
The question would be whether any of the “adulterants” in the soda would impede the process. I somehow doubt it, provided it’s not DIET soda (does diet soda draw bees? I never thought about it.)
It DOES bring up an interesting point - places that sell “gourmet” honeys sometimes market the honey by the type of flowers the bees have been using - “clover honey”, “buckwheat honey”, etc. Somehow, I can’t see “Pepsi honey” being a real hot seller.
In all seriousness, I’ll bet that even urban bees wind up getting most of their raw materials from flowers, not soda cans.
So, if I keep bees and feed them mainly on Jolt Cola which I dissolved No-Doz caffeine tablets in, would you suppose that the bees would metabolize the caffeine, or would they express it at least partly in their honey, er, like the oleander poison honey?
From personal experience, they stay away from diet soda. I work with a crew outside during weekends in October. With regular soda, the bees would collect around the rim, and take a dive into my soda. Even with ginger ale, which is less sweet. One guy drank from his cup and got the inside of his lip stung. I swallowed a bee. Somehow, I did not get stung. I kept waiting to not be able to breathe, but it never happened.
Diet 7-up (or Sprite) is the only diet soda that I actually enjoy the taste, so that is what I switched to. That and water.
Caffeine is definitely detrimental to at least some insects, and it has sometimes been proposed for use as a natural insecticide. In fact, that’s probably why the plant has it in its seeds to begin with - to prevent insects from eating them. (It seems to have antifungal effects as well.)
If the thought of a “hyper” honeybee is interesting, how about a hyper slug?
Not necessarily. I know very well the difference between yellowjackets and honeybees, and I have frequently seen honeybees visit soda cans. But yeah, yellowjackets and other wasps visit them too.
I spend a lot of time observing nature in my garden and I’ve never seen bees visiting anthing other than flowers; wasps yes, but not bees (I think bees find their nectar by visual cues from the flowers, whereas wasps find food by scent).
Maybe 15 years ago, there was a little article (2-3 paragraphs) in 3-2-1 Contact magazine about a guy who did feed his bees soda. He said that the type of honey would change depending on the type of soda the bees used–lighter sodas, like 7-up, led to lighter honeys. He said honey made from colas tended to be darker, and was good on pancakes.
I can’t believe I have such a vivid memory about some little throw-away article in a kids’ magazine.
Honeybees can eat sugary stuff like soda but prefer making honey from nectar. Sometimes they will go for soda if there are not enough nectar-rich flowers nearby. They also raid soda cans for moisture, either from the soda itself or condensation on the can.
Does diet soda(pop for us here in Ohio) attract bees trying to loose weight?
On a more realistic note, does the caffine in the colas transfer into the honey? This could be an interesting product for those who want to wake up when eating their pancakes.
Having said that I have never observed bees taking anything but natural nectar, I seem to recall that beekeepers offer sugar syrup (which they call ‘candy’ IIRC) after harvesting honey or if the hive is not doing well.
Once upon a time at a party in Berkeley, a bunch of us invented the concept of pot-flower honey (and marketing fake pot-flower honey). Somehow we didn’t actually do anything about it.
Anyone of the Teeming Millions know of investigations into this in the real world?
