Early life stage nutrition affects adult morphology and metabolisms in honey bees

As eusocial insects, honey bee brood is taken care of by nurses (young worker bees). Although nurses control overall the quality of new generation of workers, the colony nutrition state and environmental nutrition flow affects worker body size and ovariole number.  Previous studies have shown that ovariole number is an important factor influencing worker gustatory responsiveness to sugar, when workers forage and what workers forage. Here, we performed short-term starvation on fifth instar larvae  and monitored ovariole number, body mass and metabolic rate in adult bees. We found the bees with starvation treatment were smaller, had less ovariole number and higher metabolic rate. Their respiratory quotient (RQ) suggest they used sugar, protein and lipid for their energy fuels, whereas the controls used pure sugars. We also measured the metabolic stores in fat bodies and thoraces which are main tissues to store lipid and glycogen in honey bees. And we also measured glucose and trehalose in the hemolymph which reflect the metabolic state of these bees.