I wann be a bee and have my PhD. I could've told them this and saved money. Alternatively they could experiment on me. Better watch out for the ones with a bottle a day habit.


The buzz: Bees bumble when drunk

THE HARTFORD COURANT

You might not want to sit next to these drunks at your local bar.

In order to study the effects of alcohol on human behavior, scientists at Ohio State University in Columbus have been getting bees drunk.

Honeybees were placed in harnesses made from pieces of drinking straws and then observed as scientists gave them different doses of ethanol - from the equivalent of a glass of wine to several shots of 100 percent grain alcohol.

To the surprise of no one, the bees receiving the most ethanol spent the least time grooming, walking or flying. Instead, they spent the most time flipped upside-down.

"They couldn't coordinate their legs well enough to flip themselves back over again," said Julie Mustard, a postdoctoral entomologist and lead author of the report presented recently at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.

"Honeybees are very social animals, which makes them a great model for studying the effects of alcohol in a social context," said Geraldine Wright, a postdoctoral student at Ohio State and co-author of the study.

"Many people get aggressive when they are drunk. We want to learn if ethanol consumption makes the normally calm, friendly honey bee more aggressive."