The Coffee Niche

How’s your trivia concerning coffee beans? Ready for a few fun facts about your favorite morning beverage?

• Guess which caffeine-containing bean is the #2 cash commodity in the world, outranked only by oil.
• Arabica beans are far better tasting than Robusta beans. So always make sure you are getting 100% Arabica.
• Nearly all coffee beans are grown in the tropics – that is between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, and it is grown at elevations above 1000 feet.
• Like wine, the beans develop a the distinct flavor and aroma peculiar to the area in which they are grown. Two very small areas grow what is considered by experts as the very finest tasting coffee beans in the world. These are the Blue Mountain area in Jamaica and the Kona area from the big island of Hawaii. Also like fine wine, they are the most expensive varieties that money can buy.
• The beans grow on trees (not bushes) and the flowers have always been thought to be self-pollinating until recently. Please read on…

Choose only 100% Arabica beans

Here is a factual story about coffee beans and African bees.

You may have heard that these winged, body-piercing creatures, also know as killer bees, have somehow made their way to the western hemisphere. Not too many folks are happy about how they are multiplying and claiming more territory. Well, one scientist made an important discovery about these little critters. David W. Roubik of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama has spent his entire adult life studying insects, and much of that time researching bees.

Roubik noticed that there were quite a few African bees visiting coffee trees, so he did a study to find out how the this was affecting the pollination and final output of beans. It has always been a common thought that these plants are self-pollinating.

What Mr. Roubik discovered is that the plants were benefiting from the visits of the African Bees. He somehow covered part of the branches so that the bees could not have access to the flowers there. Other parts of the plants were left open to the African bees.

The results are rather impressive. There was an increase of between 50 and 60 percent mature berries (beans) in the “unprotected” areas of the plant. In addition, the bee pollinated fruit was heavier than the non-bee affected cherries.

One more significant discovery is obvious from this information provided by David Roubik. Most recently, strains of the plants have been cultivated that will grow in open sunlight rather than in partial shade, which is the natural environment of the trees. Large production companies stripped the land of the shade trees in order to make their farms easier and more productive. Removing the shade trees also removed the natural habitat of the African bees and the possibility of bee populations having access to the coffee flowers. Result – less coffee beans and more artificial intervention with fertilizers and chemicals.

How sad.