Honey Bees and their Nutrition

Apple blossom

Nutrition affects honey bees, like any other animal. They require a balance diet of sugar, proteins, vitamins, minerals and water to be and stay healthy during their life.

With the high mortality of managed honey bee colonies a new study demonstrated that poor nutrition not only affect the single bee but the entire colony as well.

The global accepted consensus among scientists is that: " ...the effects and interactions of many factors: parasites, pathogens, pesticides, low genetic diversity and poor nutrition is causing or exacerbating these losses." 

In the newly published scientific paper, Bailey Scofield and  Heather Mattel found that the chief source of nutritional stress in colonies were the inadequate access to pollen, which is of utmost importance for larval growth and development. In addition, when those young bees became adults; their foraging and recruiting performance was " substantially compromised." The relation was obvious when they compared bees reared with an abundance of pollen; the pollen stressed bees were lighter, died sooner and fewer were foraging. Furthermore, they were less likely to perform the waggle dance or dancing poorly. This atrophied behavior compromised the foraging and recruiting that those bees were supposed to do. If there are less foragers or less able foragers, the food may not be collected in sufficient quantity  to nourish the colony's larvae. In turn those developing bees can become under performer, compromising the health of the whole colony.

The authors concluded that workers raised in  pollen-limited colonies were more likely than their well nourished counterparts to " disappear after one day of foraging" their reasons were  " maybe difficulty returning to their hive, inferior ability to evade predators, insufficient vigor, poo homing ability, and other physical limitation. All brought on by undernourishment."

The big concern in this study is the impact of the poor nutrition of the colonies and  the " possibility that it acts synergistically with other environmental stressors to undermine colony function."

It seems logical that undernourished creatures would be susceptible and vulnerable to other stressors like: pest, pesticides, and pathogens.

In another previous study, Judy Wu found that" high level of pesticides in brood comb during larval development reduce adult longevity."

This perfect storm of stressors coming at once seems to make it difficult for worker bees to get the proper nourishment they need to function as efficient foragers and dancers, compromising the whole colony. 

The declining health and productivity of honey bee colonies is concerning because honey bees pollinate many of our fruits and vegetables.

Honey Bee Workers That Are Pollen Stressed as Larvae Become Poor Foragers and Waggle Dancers as Adults Hailey N. Scofield, Heather R. Mattila 

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• Published: April 8, 2015
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121731

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121731

Sub-Lethal Effects of Pesticide Residues in Brood Comb on Worker Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Development and Longevity Judy Y. Wu,Carol M. Anelli , Walter S. Sheppard

• Published: February 23, 2011
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014720

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014720