Quantifying the effects of pollen nutrition on honey bee queen egg laying with a new laboratory system.

ABSTRACT: Honey bee populations have been declining precipitously over the past decade, and multiple causative factors have been identified. Recent research indicates that these frequently co-occurring stressors interact, often in unpredictable ways, therefore it has become important to develop robust methods to assess their effects both in isolation and in combination. Most such efforts focus on honey bee workers, but the state of a colony also depends on the health and productivity of its queen. However, it is much more difficult to quantify the performance of queens relative to workers in the field, and there are no laboratory assays for queen performance. Here, we present a new system to monitor honey bee queen egg laying under laboratory conditions and report the results of experiments showing

SUBMITTER: Fine JD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6124782 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature