Did scientists really force bees to freebase?

Search: cocaine bees

Why: In The New Yorker, the Shout/Murmur "Buzzed" by Noah Baumbach opens with the epigraph:

To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain.
The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.
—The Times.

Answer: Yes! "What’s more, bees exhibit withdrawal symptoms. When a coked-up bee has to stop cold turkey, its score on a standard test of bee performance (learning to associate an odor with sugary syrup) plummets."

Source: NYTimes.com

The More You Know: All worker bees are female. Male (drone) bees are kept around to mate with virgin queens. Since they have barbed sex organs, they die after mating. If there is no queen to mate with, the drones are banned from the hive forever. They don't have stingers, so there's really no need for you to shriek and swat at them.