In a previous study, we demonstrated that honey bee (Apis mellifera) workers that were reared in colonies with low, normal (control) or high pollen availability in the spring experienced significant differences in longevity, even when the workers were placed in a common environment as adults. The purpose of the present study was to examine potential changes in the progression of worker tasks that are typically performed by bees if they have experienced different conditions of pollen availability as larvae. Workers that were reared in April in colonies that had been pollen-trapped (low), provided with pollen supplements (high) or left with natural levels of pollen in the spring (control) were taken from their source colonies as newly emerged adults, marked with tags and introduced into one of two observation hives (20 bees/source colony and 5 colonies/treatment in each hive). Until workers were 40 days old, the sides of the observation hives were scanned daily to determine the tasks that the marked workers were performing when they were encountered and their spatial distribution within the hive. The entrance of each observation hive was monitored to determine differences in the time of first foraging for workers between treatments and changes in the total proportion of workers that were foraging over time. We will discuss the implications that pollen availability has on worker longevity and temporal polyethism in nutritionally stressed colonies in the spring.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Apis mellifera (honey bee)
Keywords: pollen, social insects
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