Flight performance of pollen starved honey bees and incomplete compensation through ingestion after early life pollen deprivation

Abstract

We investigated the effect of adult honey bee pollen nutrition on the flight performance of honey bees. Therefore, caged bees were allowed to perform 30 min of defecation/training flights every second day before flight performance of pollen-fed bees and pollen-deprived bees older than 16 days were compared in a flight mill. We first fed 10 µL of 1 M glucose solution to bees, and after they metabolized this during flight, they were fed 10 µL of 2 M glucose solution for a second flight test. Pollen-deprived bees flew longer and further than pollen-fed bees in both flights. Pollen-fed bees flew faster in the early period at the beginning of flights, whereas pollen-deprived bees were faster in the final phases. Pollen-fed bees were able to raise their maximum flight speed in 2 M glucose solution flights, whereas pollen-constraint bees were not. The two groups did not differ in abdomen fresh weight, but the fresh weight of the head and thorax and dry weight of the head, thorax and abdomen were higher in pollen-fed bees. In a second experiment, we constrained pollen consumption of caged bees during the first 7 days and compared daily consumption of bees from day 8–16 to consumption of bees unrestricted in pollen. We found that pollen-deprived bees perceive the pollen shortage and try to compensate for their needs by consuming significantly more pollen at the later phase of their life than pollen-fed bees of the same age. Still, bees constrained from pollen in the first 7 days did only reach 51.1% of the lifetime consumption of unconstrained bees. This shows that bees can sense the need for essential nutrients from pollen, but their physiological apparatus does not allow them to fully compensate for their early life constraint. Pollen deprivation only in the first 7 days of worker life likewise significantly reduced fresh and dry weights of the body sections (head, thorax, and abdomen) and survival. This underlines the importance of protein consumption in a short critical period early in adult bees’ lives for their development and their performance later in life.

Changes in Vitellogenin, Abdominal Lipid Content, and Hypopharyngeal Gland Development in Honey Bees Fed Diets with Different Protein Sources

“…In a study like ours, the wet and dry weights of adult bees were reported to be 9.5-11.5 mg/bee and 3.6-4.0 mg/bee, respectively [57]. The worker bees were found to have lower wet and dry weights than the pollen-fed bees when they were not fed pollen until the 7th day after cell emergence [58].…”

One for the road: Bumble bees consume pollen at flowers

“…Thus, perhaps workers of captive colonies were consuming pollen directly from flowers to supplement their nutrition. Accordingly, honey bee workers that are initially pollen deprived, when later offered pollen, compensate by eating more pollen (Brodschneider et al 2022).…”

Land‐use affects pollinator‐specific resource availability and pollinator foraging behaviour

“…For example, food shortage can decrease foraging efficiency in honey bees by reducing flight performance (Brodschneider et al, 2022) or foraging activity (Scofield & Mattila, 2015).…”

“…Foraging behaviour varies between individual pollinators and is dependent on the plant species visited (Willmer, 2011 ), but it can also be affected by land‐use‐induced limitation of floral resources. For example, food shortage can decrease foraging efficiency in honey bees by reducing flight performance (Brodschneider et al., 2022 ) or foraging activity (Scofield & Mattila, 2015 ). Additionally, poor nutrition can affect pollinator health, for example by reducing pollinator body size, which is directly linked to foraging behaviour and vice versa (Chole et al., 2019 ; Klumpers et al., 2019 ; Straub et al., 2023 ).…”