ALS 3923 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Waggle Dance, Caffeine

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Agriculture and Life Science
• Course: ALS 3923
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Caffeinated forage tricks honeybees into increasing foraging and recruitment. The primary purpose of this article is to illustrate the outcomes of a honeybee"s consumption on caffeinated plants. This research was conducted in seven days and showed that when a honeybee intakes caffeine there is an increase in a recruitment behavior called the waggle dance. Honeybees that performed this behavior under caffeine had an 88% dance propensity unlike those who had a controlled feeding- dance propensity was 67%. There was also an increase in forage frequency, persistency, and site specificity. Although there is a positive aspect to caffeinated forage, bees that ingest caffeine can also demonstrate intake negatively. Honey production showed a 14. 5% decrease each day compared to environments that were both caffeine free and had no decrease in nectar concentration. The major implication in this research is that in the presence of caffeine, the visitation and recruitment were greater despite a plants smaller production rate of nectar.