Behavioural and Physiological Aspects of Nurse Bees in Relation to the Composition of Larval Food During Caste Differentiation in the Honeybee

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The behaviour of nurse bees provisioning honeybee (Apis mellifera) brood cells was studied by using video equipment to make long-terra recordings of individual queen and worker larvae from hatching until the brood cell was sealed. The contents of water, sugars, proteins, lipids and free amino acids were determined for larval food collected from brood cells containing drone, worker or queen larvae. The feeding pattern of queen larvae hardly altered during their development; most feedings occurred during relatively short (50 s) duration. In this period a marked decline was observed in the glucose/fructose ratio for worker jelly. After 84 h of larval age, feedings of long duration were interspersed with feedings of short duration. At this stage the total sugar content of worker jelly increased and the contents of proteins and lipids decreased simultaneously. Hypopharyngeal glands isolated from bees feeding younger worker larvae (making long visits) displayed high rates of in vitro protein synthesis. Most glands from bees feeding queen larvae (brief visits) demonstrated reduced synthetic activity. It is suggested that the duration of the larval feedings is related to the origin and consequently to the composition of the food secreted by the nurse bees.