Honey bee (Apis mellifera) preference towards micronutrients and their impact on bee colonies

Khan, Khalid Ali; Ghramh, Hamed A.; Ahmad, Zubair; El-Niweiri, Mogbel A. A.; Mohammed, Mohamed Elimam Ahamed

doi:10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.02.084

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Honey bees can visit various food sources at the same time and covers the distance of around 10 kilometers to collect primary food resources such as nectar and pollen that are stored in their colonies as honey and beebread [ 9 ]. Among these, nectar is the main source of carbohydrates necessary to meet energy requirements [ 10 , 11 ]. Honey bees obtain macro and micronutrients including proteins, minerals, vitamins, and lipids from pollen that are essential for brood rearing, maturation, adult longevity, and overall colony development [ 12 , 13 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative assessment of various supplementary diets on commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera) health and colony performance

Ahmad

Khan

et al. 2021

PLoS ONE

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A healthy honey bee stock is critical to the beekeeping industry and the sustainability of the ecosystem. The quality of the supplemental diet influences the development and strength of the colony, especially during the pollen dearth period in the surrounding environment. However, the extent to which pollen substitute protein feeding affects honey bee colony parameters is not fully known. We conducted this study to test the influence of various supplemental diets on foraging effort, pollen load, capped brood area, population density, and honey yield. The treatment groups were supplied with patties of pollen substitute diets, whereas sugar syrup was given to the control group. Our results indicated that honey bees consumed a significantly higher amount of Diet 1 (45 g soybean flour + 15 g Brewer’s yeast + 75 g powdered sugar + 7.5 g skimmed milk + 7.5 g date palm pollen + 200 mL sugar syrup supplement with Vitamin C) followed by others supplemented diets. Further, pollen load, worker-sealed brood area, population strength, and honey yield differed significantly when Diet 1 was consumed instead of other supplemental diets. The proportion of biological parameters was less in the control group as compared to other treatments. This study highlights the potential of supplemental diets to improve the bee’s health and colony development when the pollens availability and diversity are insufficient.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative assessment of various supplementary diets on commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera) health and colony performance

Ahmad

Khan

et al. 2021

PLoS ONE

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“…Previous work showed that honeybee preferences for minerals in water vary during the season. [ 57 , 59 , 60 ] The fact that the bees did not prefer low concentrations of most of these dietary minerals, however, indicates that they probably lack the ability to taste most of these compounds at low concentrations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Honeybees faced with mineral limitations in pollen may forage on alternate food sources (e.g. water) [57][58][59][60] to (possibly) complement their nutrition. Other studies suggest that bees avoid ingesting high concentrations of minerals (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioural regulation of mineral salt intake in honeybees: a self-selection approach

Sousa

Darnell

Wright

2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Minerals are required in small amounts to sustain metabolic activity in animals, but mineral deficiencies can also lead to metabolic bottlenecks and mineral excesses can induce toxicity. For these reasons, we could reasonably expect that micronutrients are actively regulated around nutritional optima. Honeybees have co-evolved with flowering plants such that their main sources of nutrients are floral pollen and nectar. Like other insects, honeybees balance their intake of multiple macronutrients during food consumption using a combination of pre- and post-ingestive mechanisms. How they regulate their intake of micronutrients using these mechanisms has rarely been studied. Using two-choice feeding assays, we tested whether caged and broodless young workers preferred solutions containing individual salts (NaCl, KCl, CaCl 2 , MgCl 2 ) or metals (FeCl 3 , CuCl 2 , ZnCl 2 , MnCl 2 ) in a concentration-dependent manner. We found that young adult workers could only self-select and optimize their dietary intake around specific concentrations of sodium, iron and copper. Bees largely avoided high concentration mineral solutions to minimize toxicity. These experiments demonstrate the limits of the regulation of intake of micronutrients in honeybees. This is the first study to compare this form of behaviour in one organism for eight different micronutrients. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Natural processes influencing pollinator health: from chemistry to landscapes’.

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“…UNC80 is essential in drosophila to promote circadian behavioral rhythm [86]. Our recent findings and previous behavioral facts suggest genes involved in caste differentiation, depression; facilitate pathways for neurotransmitters, integumentary system, storage proteins, brain development, sensory processing, and neurodegenerative disorder, which may cause impairment learning and reduce the learning performance in failed-learner bees [87][88][89][90].…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 58%

Differential gene expression analysis following olfactory learning in honeybee (Apis mellifera L.)

et al. 2022

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Insects change their stimulus-response through the perception of associating these stimuli with important survival events such as rewards, threats, and mates. Insects develop strong associations and relate them to their experiences through several behavioral procedures. Among the insects, Apis species, Apis mellifera ligustica are known for their outstanding ability to learn with tremendous economic importance. Apis mellifera ligustica has a strong cognitive ability and promising model species for investigating the neurobiological basis of remarkable olfactory learning abilities. Here we evaluated the olfactory learning ability of A. mellifera by using the proboscis extension reflex (PER) protocol. The brains of the learner and failed-learner bees were examined for comparative transcriptome analysis by RNA-Seq to explain the difference in the learning capacity. In this study, we used an appetitive olfactory learning paradigm in the same age of A. mellifera bees to examine the differential gene expression in the brain of the learner and failed-learner. Bees that respond in 2nd and 3rd trials or only responded to 3rd trials were defined as learned bees, failed-learner individuals were those bees that did not respond in all learning trials The results indicate that the learning ability of learner bees was significantly higher than failed-learner bees for 12 days. We obtained approximately 46.7 and 46.4 million clean reads from the learner bees failed-learner bees, respectively. Gene expression profile between learners’ bees and failed-learners bees identified 74 differentially expressed genes, 57 genes up-regulated in the brains of learners and 17 genes were down-regulated in the brains of the bees that fail to learn. The qRT-PCR validated the differently expressed genes. Transcriptome analyses revealed that specific genes in learner and failed-learner bees either down-regulated or up-regulated play a crucial role in brain development and learning behavior. Our finding suggests that down-regulated genes of the brain involved in the integumentary system, storage proteins, brain development, sensory processing, and neurodegenerative disorder may result in reduced olfactory discrimination and olfactory sensitivity in failed-learner bees. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the olfactory learning behavior and gene expression information, which opens the door for understanding of the molecular mechanism of olfactory learning behavior in honeybees.

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Honey bee (Apis mellifera) preference towards micronutrients and their impact on bee colonies

Cited by 25 publications

References 39 publications

Comparative assessment of various supplementary diets on commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera) health and colony performance

Comparative assessment of various supplementary diets on commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera) health and colony performance

Behavioural regulation of mineral salt intake in honeybees: a self-selection approach

Differential gene expression analysis following olfactory learning in honeybee (Apis mellifera L.)

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