Bees and Cocaine (Bullshit Research, Part 6)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

”New pets?”

It’s early in the morning and the assistant just entered the lab to find Dr. Lemoine hunched over her table, feeding bees droplets of what looks to be sugar water. She doesn’t look up.

”When did I ever express any love for animals that lead you to the conclusion I might have the desire to own a pet?”

”Well, I think I remember that you liked the woodpeckers.”

”They were beautiful test subjects. But pets are too much useless work. What do you get from taking care of them? There is no scientific gain.”

”Love? Affection?”

”Pah”, Dr. Lemoine scoffs. ”Chemical reactions caused by neurotransmitters. I can create those artificially. That’s much cheaper than feeding a flea infested dog on a daily basis.”

”Fine. What are the bees for then?”

”Science, obviously.”

”Obviously.” The assistant puts away his stuff and comes closer to observe his boss feeding the bees.

”Those bees look a bit weird”, he says after a while.

”Of course they look weird. They’re on cocaine.” She then continues to feed one bee after another with the solution.

Nobody says anything for a while.

”So …”, the assistant carefully tries to ask a question.

”I want to observe their behavior under the influence of cocaine. Isn’t that obvious?”

”Of course. Of course.” He knows better than to disagree. In his first week, the first month, he would have done that. But not anymore.

Dr. Lemoine finishes drugging her bees, scoops them up and carries them outside. Her assistant follows. At the back of the building, there’s a huge garden with blooming fruit trees and flowers. A bee paradise.

The cocaine bees are placed back in the hive and Dr. Lemoine sits down on a chair, grabs a bottle of some kind of juice that had been standing next to the chair and takes a sip. Then she gestures her assistant to sit down on the chair next to her.

”This will take a while”, she says.

”Don’t you want to observe them?”, he asks.

”I placed tiny cameras in the hive. That should be enough. Juice?” She produces another bottle from under her chair.

”Sure, why not.”

Together they sit around for hours without talking a word. The only sound is the buzzing of bees flying away from the hive and returning again. Over and over.

”I think we have enough data now”, Dr. Lemoine finally says. The assistant flinches a bit, he was about to fall asleep.

”Already?”

”This wasn’t the first time I did this. Didn’t you notice I’ve been preparing bees for the whole last week?”

”I’ve been out for my sister’s wedding for the whole week. You worked with my replacement”, he reminds her.

”Oh. That explains some things.”

To his disappointment, she doesn’t elaborate. What kind of things does it explain? Positive? Negative? Was the replacement better than him? Worse? Why did he even care, she obviously didn’t care enough to notice he had been gone.

Together, they review the sped-up footage of the day. The assistant doesn’t see anything remarkable, but the Doctor is constantly producing excited noises so something must be going on. When the footage finally ends, Dr. Lemoine had a wide grin on her face.

”How delightful. Absolutely delightful.”

”What did you find out?”

”The data I collected today confirms what my previous experiments suggested. Cocaine affects bees in a similar way it does humans. They widely overestimate themselves.”

”How can a bee overestimate itself?” The assistant chuckles.

”You know that bees do a dance when they try to show other bees where they found food, right?”

”Of course, that is one of the things you learn as a child for some reason.”

”Well, the bees don’t dance every time, only when the food source is big enough for the other bees consideration. The drugged bees, however, do that dance far more frequently and indicate a much greater value of resources than they actually encountered.”

”Fascinating.” The assistant’s voice is free of any sarcasm.

”Yes, it is. Just imagine what we could do with this knowledge! If bees react like humans to cocaine, why not test if they react to epilepsy medication too? Maybe we can move our medical research from mice to insects. That would be so much easier, less costly and less cruel! And so much less paperwork.”

Of course, she had to mention the paperwork and the cost, as if a reduction in animal cruelty wasn’t good enough. A slight smirk appears on the assistant’s face.

”Now, let’s check if these bees also suffer withdrawal symptoms …”
_@suesa

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Disclaimer: The “Bullshit Research” series is based on actual scientific papers. While the results are accurate, the way of testing and the people involved are fictional.

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Source:

Effects of cocaine on honey bee dance behavior

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Picture taken from pixabay.com

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