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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Even six-legged diners can’t resist sweet-and-salty snacks

Bees and butterflies prefer sodium-spiked nectar to plain, according to experiments conducted in a flowery meadow.
A honeybee (Apis mellifera) on a rose flower with blue sky in the background, in summertime in Germany.

Western honeybees have a taste for nectar that's salty as well as sweet. Credit: Solvin Zankl/Nature Picture Library

Bees get a buzz out of salty nectar, researchers have found after doctoring flowers with sodium-laced sugar water1.

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Nature 603, 204 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00591-9

References

  1. Finkelstein, C. J. et al. Biol. Lett. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0016 (2022).

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