B-Vitamins Influence the Consumption of Macronutrients in Honey Bees

Abstract

Insects require dietary sources of B-vitamins, but relatively little is known about whether they regulate B-vitamin intake in the same way they regulate other nutrients. Honey bees meet their B-vitamin requirements mainly from the pollen they collect. Employing the geometric framework for nutrition, we found that honey bees actively regulate their vitamin intake following Bertrand's rule. We fed bees with a diet of essential amino acids (EAAs) and carbohydrate (C) to identify how the addition of B-vitamins affected the regulation of these macronutrients. In our experiments, honey bees preferred vitamins in concentrations comparable to those found in honey bee food (pollen, beebread, and royal jelly). Honey bees actively regulated niacin around an optimal value. Supplementing honey bee diets with B-vitamins influenced the amount of EAAs and carbohydrate ingested differently depending on the type of the vitamin. The impact of these vitamins was observed over the course of seven days where honey bees' mortality increased on diets of low and medium folic acid concentrations. This study provides insights into honey bee food intake regulation and the feeding preferences and sets the basis for future studies considering B-vitamins in honey bees diets.

Turnover of strain-level diversity modulates functional traits in the honeybee gut microbiome between nurses and foragers

“…Some of these genes have already been found to be variably present among individual bees in our previous study [22], but they could not be linked to any host differences. Vitamin B12 is an important co-factor that cannot be synthesized by honeybees (or other animals) [55], but needs to be taken up from the diet or synthesized by bacterial symbionts [56]. It is possible that Bombilactobacillus strains synthesizing this vitamin compensate for the lack of vitamin B12 in the pollen-deprived diet of foragers.…”

Turnover of strain-level diversity modulates functional traits in the honeybee gut microbiome between nurses and foragers

“…Some of these genes have already been found to be variably present among individual bees in our previous study (Ellegaard and Engel 2019), but they could not be linked to any host differences. Vitamin B12 is an important co-factor that cannot be synthesized by honeybees (or other animals) (Kaval and Garsin, 2018), but needs to be taken up from the diet or synthesized by bacterial symbionts (Elsayeh et al, 2022). It is possible that Bombilactobacillus strains synthesizing this vitamin compensate the lack of vitamin B12 in the pollen-deprived diet of foragers.…”

The Key Role of Amino Acids in Pollen Quality and Honey Bee Physiology—A Review

“…In addition, an important aspect is the stoichiometry of individual elements, especially carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, manganese and copper. Macronutrients and micronutrients play an important role in the functioning of the bee organism as precursors of enzymes and hormones in all metabolic processes [ 54 , 55 ]. Just like humans, insects lack the ability to synthesize most vitamins, so they must ingest them along with pollen.…”