Do city bees feast on flower nectar, or do they mostly slurp up sugary soda?

That was the question Clint Penick was mulling while he tended to some hives. Dr. Penick is an entomologist at North Carolina State University, and he wanted to find out if midsize cities had enough flowers available to sustain hungry bees, or if the buzzing insects were guzzling Big Gulps to get their fix.

Bees have been caught cheating on their all-natural diets before. In 2010 a beekeeper in Brooklyn discovered her bees were stealing sips of syrup from a nearby maraschino cherry factory after she noticed her hives were oozing bright red honey.

To figure out if something similar was happening in midsize cities, Dr. Penick and his colleagues collected bees from 39 different colonies within 30 miles of Raleigh, North Carolina. Their specimens came from hives managed by beekeepers as well as from wild colonies.