Biologists from the University of Sussex arranged identical feeders containing a sugar solution for three hives of bees, then spiked one with a concentration of caffeine. As any office drone could guess, the bees returned more frequently to forage from the caffeinated solution, which also put some pep in their dance steps: Bees “waggle” back at the hive to communicate the location of a food source, and the caffeinated bees danced a lot harder. This led them to overstate their find to their bee brethren.
The biologists believe the effects of the drug tricked the bees into thinking the caffeine-laced sugar was of a higher quality than the control solution. In turn, this led the indoctrinated to dart straight for the caffeinated option and ignore other sources of food nearby.
