It's been warm enough on a couple of days (western Rockies foothills) this month for our neighbor's bees to come over for a visit. They've been clustering around the base of a rose and a purple smokebush where we've been dumping coffee grounds this winter. There are also a couple of other places in the yard (although farther from the hives) that have coffee ground dumps but not the interest from the bees.

Have a look at the photos...it looks like they're filling their sacs with coffee. I'm stumped. caffeinated honey??

Hi. I'm not sure what's going on with the coffee grounds but the coffee tree is a honey bee plant.
They may be getting something from the grounds that they get from the plant. Though I would think roasting the coffee and then brewing it to drink would destroy the nutritive value


But I'm sure the bees know more than I do.

Our bees do similarly strange things. They go after things that we dump and I can never find a rhyme or reason. My only guess is that there's some rare mineral or vitamin they are finding in the item they are mining.

Here it happens in the spring with sawdust from fresh cut wood. I figure they are getting sap from the sawdust.

I talked to an entomologist PhD candidate friend of mine. He was equally baffled - but doesn't think that any harm will come to the bees. They are good at what they do. It's all pretty neat, nonetheless. @flaflwrgrl did some neat research and posted it in this thread:
http://garden.org/thread/view_...

I'm going with the making of propolis with caffeic acid as a component.

Thanks for the replies. I sure get a kick out of seeing/learning new things!

Mindy03 said:Here it happens in the spring with sawdust from fresh cut wood. I figure they are getting sap from the sawdust.

I think Margaret is right here about the sawdust b/c they do use sap in making propolis.