Some Bees Are Addicted to Caffeine (albanydailystar.com) 114
mdsolar shares a new article about plants which produce caffeine to attract bees and encourage repeat visits to help with their pollination. "Scientists at the University of Sussex said they thought the plants produce the caffeine in their nectar to fool bees into thinking it contains more sugar than it actually does," reports the Albany Daily Star. In addition, bees communicate by "dancing" for their colleagues, and the caffeinated bees danced faster, inadvertently directing the other bees to revisit those flowers, even after nectar had run dry. "If they just had one, three-hour exposure to the caffeinated nectar on the first day," one researcher said, "they would come back for many more days, and more often within each day."
Albany Daily Star is garbage (Score:2, Insightful)
They literally repost months-old stories as if they're brand new. This one was posted on CNET [cnet.com] in October.
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They literally repost months-old stories as if they're brand new. This one was posted on CNET [cnet.com] in October.
Not only is it garbage, their own "about" page talks about a different news organization that doesn't appear to exist. I am pretty sure this is just a Facebook clickbait news generator. http://www.albanydailystar.com... [albanydailystar.com]
In solidarity with our fellow addicts (Score:2)
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Something I have learned from living here for most of my life, in Maryland, it is more important to look like you are doing something positive, than to actually do something positive. This is just yet another example. Science says this might be a contributing factor, so let's ban it! Science hasn't even come out with a study that actually links this chemical to CCD, but what does that matter, even when CCD is happening in places that don't even use these chemicals, we must DO SOMETHING!
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There have been several studies, linked in this thread. Did you read the articles even? They show no negative effects from these pesticides in bees. There is some kind of indication that the bees prefer food laced with these substances, but that doesn't mean anything when the bees are not negatively impacted by the pesticide.
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I know how they feel (Score:3, Funny)
You and bee both. Mee both. Be mothe! Me both!!
Tea in their honey (Score:3)
Do Be a Do Bee (Score:1)
EVERYBODY is on drugs (Score:1)
That explains a lot.
Cool :D (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes sense. Plants didn't evolve to produce caffeine without there being a selection pressure towards it. This is presumably how that pressure originated, before humans got involved.
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Caffeine is an insecticide, it kills insects that eat too much of the plants leaves (it's bitter too). These bees seem to have built up a tolerance large enough to get the positive effects without dying. Don't forget that a few ounces (few dozen grams) of pure caffeine is enough to kill almost any human.
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take a guess at how the cannabis plant worked it out with the bees...
Don't they get lost on the way home, then?
That explains something (Score:4, Interesting)
No wonder bees are so easily attracted to my Mountain Dew.
Re:That explains something (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, they are only in it for the buzz.
In other words humans are no smarter than bees (Score:1)
Does no one check dates? (Score:1)
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The rest of the year you shouldn't trust 90% of what you read.
Parallels (Score:2)
So bee worker bees are addicted to caffeine in just the same way as human worker bees?
I'm not surprised. Sometimes I think caffeine is the only thing that lets me survive the office with my dignity and sanity intact.
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Sometimes I think caffeine is the only thing that lets me survive the office with my dignity and sanity intact.
Count yourself lucky, along with the other 95% of humanity that just gets a nice "pick me up" from caffeine. Unfortunately, I'm part of the estimated 5% of humanity that has adverse affects from any caffeine and is hypersensitive to it. Specifically, I get quite anxious when I drink ANY caffeine. For the longest time I didn't know what was wrong with me. After doing some self psychology observation, various experiments on myself (i.e. how do I react to one 20 oz soda a day...how do I react to two...how do I
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Sometimes I think caffeine is the only thing that lets me survive the office with my dignity and sanity intact.
Count yourself lucky, along with the other 95% of humanity that just gets a nice "pick me up" from caffeine. Unfortunately, I'm part of the estimated 5% of humanity that has adverse affects from any caffeine and is hypersensitive to it. Specifically, I get quite anxious when I drink ANY caffeine. For the longest time I didn't know what was wrong with me. After doing some self psychology observation, various experiments on myself (i.e. how do I react to one 20 oz soda a day...how do I react to two...how do I react to no soda, etc), I found out that I get quite anxious after ingesting any caffeine. So I had to go "cold turkey" on it, which was not easy. You find out just how addicting caffeine really is when you need to get off of it. Luckily, I finally got off of it and it's made quite a difference in my life. Like I said, for most of humanity, caffeine is quite harmless and a nice "pick me up" drug. But for a small subset of humanity, we can't have it. I just wish they could find us hypersensitive people before it really screws with our lives.
Gordon
That's quite interesting. I wonder how many people who experience some form of anxiety are unwittingly exacerbating their problem with caffeine intake.
You're making me want to temporarily sacrifice my sanity and dignity to see if I experience any positive affects from removing coffee from my diet!
Have you found a substitute? Do you even need one anymore?
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Not advisable to quit caffeine cold turkey.
Quitting cold turkey can give some people permanent incurable migraines.
Better to ease off it. Get down to a half a cup (or even a quarter cup) per day before you go cold turkey.
Given the (low) risk of a (horrible, drastic, life ruining) event, I'd be very cautious. I might even cut back by 50% every 3 days until I was down to a tablespoon.
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"So I had to go "cold turkey" on it, which was not easy. You find out just how addicting caffeine really is when you need to get off of it."
Please elaborate. Judging from my symptoms during holidays, I'd expect two days of mild headache and a bit more sleepiness before lunch time in the first few days.
Cockroaches too (Score:2)
FYI roaches seem to get drunk on coffee -- they can even overdose themselves to death.
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FYI roaches seem to get drunk on coffee -- they can even overdose themselves to death.
Good to know.
Know of any 'folk recipes' for a caffeine-based insecticide for roaches or ants?
Because they need the buzz? (Score:2)
Re:foop (Score:4, Funny)
"Contrrol the alcohol level... "
Here in Arizona the Africanized bees have taken over completely from the former European bees, so the plants are learning to make their nectar taste like Colt 45.
Re: foop (Score:3, Insightful)
Racist joke gets a +3 funny? That's fucked up..
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It's at 5 now. Slashdot has been going reactionary for a while now. The smart people left, and the remains are not pretty, unless you enjoy watching a train-wreck.
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I wish their kind wasn't so against space travel so they'd get the hell off of this planet.
When it's privately run, we're in favor of space travel. The problem with public programs is not so much the money in comparison to other spending, but that the fear-driven lefty Luddites can prevent NASA from doing anything really adventurous. Thus we get an endless series of science fair experiments in LEO.
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"It's weird how Republicans blame their problems on liberals without even thinking about it. JFK set the path for the moonshot."
When liberals won't even build a telescope on a barren mountaintop for fear of the Stone Age volcano gods, what hope do they have of ever running a real space program? Today's left would never have let JFK do anything as risky as going to the moon, and all the giant infrastructure projects of Roosevelt's New Deal would still be tied up in court.
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Shall we talk about Trump? What about Cruz? What about those are the only two candidates you righties could come up with.
You don't pay much attention, do you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Kasich is still in the primaries, and there were about a dozen others that dropped out, how do you only see the Republicans coming up with only two candidates? The Democratic Party only has two left, but even they started out with more.
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I wish their kind wasn't so against space travel so they'd get the hell off of this planet.
When it's privately run, we're in favor of space travel. The problem with public programs is not so much the money in comparison to other spending, but that the fear-driven lefty Luddites can prevent NASA from doing anything really adventurous. Thus we get an endless series of science fair experiments in LEO.
Is this a good time to point out how much publicly funded research Musk et al are building on with their really adventurous plans for a launch vehicle?
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Those programs are even being publically funded as well, just like all private space, it is the same as "public" space, which was a bunch of corporations doing the work as well.
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Republicans are deluded.
Liberal lies! They were never luded in the first place, how could they be deluded?
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Considering he's a New York City liberal, I think you're wrong.
Correct, and it's bizarre how nearly half of the Republicans in their primaries have voted for them. They just don't know enough to know the truth.
The Southern Strategy wasn't exactly about instructing the masses in the intricacies of strict constructionism and the Laffer Curve. The Republicans should change their symbol from the elephant to the pander bear.
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