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Coffee grounds & honey bees

Posted: November 25th, 2008, 7:08 am
by Allen Dick
I got this via the form on the site. I prefer to deal with these things here, or on the HoneyBeeWorld list (http://honeybeeworld.com/mailman/listin ... eworld.com), so all can share and contribute:
Coffee grounds & honey bees

I have noticed that honey bees consume coffee grounds that I leave in a flower garden to compost. I then performed a test with coffee grounds, all of which started out as caffeinated. I placed the following on separate very small teacup plates:

1) Dry fresh (unused) coffee grounds.
2) Wet fresh (unused) coffee grounds.
3) Wet used (I made coffee from it) coffee grounds.
4) A tablespoon of honey.
5) There were flowers (daisies) close to the miniature dishes.

I observed:

1) Ignored by honey bees.
2) Slight honey bee activity.
3) Favorite of honey bees. A pile 1” high by 2” wide is consumed in 24 hours.
4) Ignored by honey bees.
5) Some honey bee activity.

What do you think? Are used coffee grounds an OK food for honey bees? Could honey bees create a coffee flavored honey? If so, there is a considerable amount of used coffee grounds at restaurants ready for use.

Ken Young

Re: Coffee grounds & honey bees

Posted: November 25th, 2008, 7:13 am
by Allen Dick
Actually, I have no idea. Good question.

My thoughts are that if the bees go out of their way to gather it, they probably know best.
Bees will gather all sorts of things are often seen on manure ples and other surprising places. It is thought that they find minerals and other things of interest to them there and mine the resource.

I doubt the flavour will show up in the honey, due to the small amount and the fact that there is little sugar in the grounds. Whatever they are doing with it, they are not making honey from it.

Is it nutritious and would they take it in larger amounts? Don't know. You might examine the pollen baskets of the bees and your combs to see how they transport it and if they are storing it like pollen.

allen

Re: Coffee grounds & honey bees

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 11:27 pm
by buzz1356
Just search Google with the words "propolis" and "caffeine".... some types of propolis contain alot of caffeine

Bees most definitely have a use for everything they collect, whether it be moisteur off of cow pies or caulking from a window, but their collections might not always be nutritious

Re: Coffee grounds & honey bees

Posted: December 16th, 2009, 9:33 pm
by sILent_wEng
This is new at that the honey bee consumed coffee ground, I really like this observation. It looks at that honey bee can make a lot of coffee once they take in the process because they can produce a fresh coffee. I think that this observation can take an idea to others to use a honey bee for coffee making.




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