Did you know that bees can also ‘get drunk’? In fact, inside the hive the nectar ferments due to the high temperatures and the bees are unable to return to the hive.
Finding ways to alter own perception of reality has been a very common practice in humans for millennia. However, human is not the only one to dedicate himself to such activities: in nature there are several known examples of animals that use some natural sostances to alter their state of consciousness and one of these is the honeybee.
In Australia, especially in the warmer months, it is not uncommon to observe honeybees flying in an uncoordinated manner. This is because, due to high temperatures, the nectar they feed on ferment, producing small quantities of ethanol. Nectar is an aqueous solution in which the sugars fructose, glucose, sucrose, and other substances are dissolved in variable percentages. If a honeybee finds fermented nectar containing ethanol, it will not hesitate to drink it. It is not yet clear whether this “alcoholic” attitude is conscious in nature or whether it is a coincidence.
Some studies have been done to understand what were the consequences of alcohol intake at different concentrations on the ability of honeybees to feed themselves and pollinate other flowers. It turns out that “drunk” honeybees have difficulty traveling between the hive and the place chosen for feeding. Furthermore, they cannot return to their hive: in fact, the guard bees, called “bouncers”, keep them out to prevent them from transforming the nectar into alcoholic honey.
A drunk honeybee behaves in a similar way to that of a human: it spends more time in flight, but risks crashing, walks in an awkward and uncoordinated way, sticks its tongue (or trunk) out, and can even become more aggressive. Furthermore, it is characterized by behavioral changes such as the tendency to continuously groom itself with its paws and to slow down its foraging cycles by spending more time in the hive. Finally, honeybees that have taken slightly larger doses of alcoholic nectar completely lose the ability to find the hive again and lie on their backs moving their legs in the air.