Decoupling the effects of nutrition, age, and behavioral caste on honey bee physiology, immunity, and colony health.

ABSTRACT: Nutritional stress, especially a dearth of pollen, has been linked to honey bee colony losses. Colony-level experiments are critical for understanding the mechanisms by which nutritional stress affects individual honey bee physiology and pushes honey bee colonies to collapse. In this study, we investigated the impact of pollen restriction on key markers of honey bee physiology, main elements of the immune system, and predominant honey bee viruses. To achieve this objective, we uncoupled the effects of behavior, age, and nutritional conditions using a new colony establishment technique designed to control size, demography, and genetic background. Our results showed that the expression of storage proteins, including vitellogenin (vg) and royal jelly major protein 1 (mrjp1), wer

SUBMITTER: Corona M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10040860 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature