Do honey bees enjoy caffeinated nectar like humans do?

Many people enjoy having a cup of fresh coffee to start a new day in the morning. Do any animals also enjoy such a cup of joe? Recently researchers report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 15 that when honey bees find caffeinated nectar, they will also be fascinated.
In fact, it appears that bees may select caffeinated nectar over an uncaffeinated but otherwise equal-quality alternative. As a result, the researchers say, plants may be lacing their nectar with caffeine as a way to pass off cheaper goods.
"We describe a novel way in which some plants, through the action of a secondary compound like caffeine that is present in nectar, may be tricking the honey bee by securing loyal and faithful foraging and recruitment behaviors, perhaps without providing the best quality forage," says Margaret Couvillon from the University of Sussex.
"The effect of caffeine is akin to drugging, where the honey bees are tricked into valuing the forage as a higher quality than it really is. The duped pollinators forage and recruit accordingly," says Roger Schürch, of the University of Sussex and the University of Bern.
They learned from the previous syudies that honey bees are better at learning and remembering particular scents when they are under the influence of caffeine, suggesting a role for reward pathways in the bees' brains. The nectar of many flowering plants contains caffeine in low concentrations. They all wondered how caffeine would affect the natural behaviors as seen in the field.
After research and investigation, they saw an effect of caffeine just about everywhere they looked in foraging and recruitment, and all in the direction to make the colony more faithful to the caffeinated source compared to an equal-quality, uncaffeinated source. According to the individual bees' behaviors, the researchers concluded that caffeinated nectar could reduce honey production in colonies if indeed plants reduce the sweetness of their nectar. The results show that the interests of plants and their pollinators don't always align.
The researchers hope to determine the effects of other compounds. They think that chemistry may be a popular way for plants to get the run upon the pollinators.
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