ArticleThe Journal of experimental biology2021
Regulation of dietary intake of protein and lipid by nurse-age adult worker honeybees.
Article in The Journal of experimental biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impact of Monofloral Pollen Diets on the Development of Hypopharyngeal Glands and Modulation of Enzymatic, Non-Enzymatic, and Ionic Biomarker Activities in Selected Fat Body Segments and Hemolymph ofMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Substantial variation in larval honey bee nutrition within and among Apis mellifera colonies.PloS one · 2026Article
- A technical semi-field methodology to measure the effect of nutrition on honey bee brood rearing.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Environmental cues rather than quality of supplemented pollen drive the foraging behaviour of honey bees during avocado pollination.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Can the nutritional geometric framework unveil how macronutrients in pollen shape solitary bee foraging and survival?Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Article
- Insect Lipids as Novel Source for Future Applications: Chemical Composition and Industry Applications-A Comprehensive Review.Food science & nutrition · 2025Review
- Honey bee immune response to trace concentrations of clothianidin goes beyond the macronutrients found in artificial diets.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Recycling honey bee drone brood for sustainable beekeeping.Journal of economic entomology · 2025Article
- Differential fatty acids utilization across life stages in a Vespa species.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2025Article
- Review
- Nurse bees regulate the larval nutrition of developing workers (Apis mellifera) when feeding on various pollen types.Journal of economic entomology · 2024Article
- The effects of queen mandibular pheromone on nurse-aged honey bee (Apis mellifera) hypopharyngeal gland size and lipid metabolism.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- Sterol and lipid metabolism in bees.Metabolomics : Official journal of the Metabolomic Society · 2023Review
- Viral species differentially influence macronutrient preferences based on honey bee genotype.Biology open · 2022Article
- Differential Bacterial Community of Bee Bread and Bee Pollen Revealed by 16s rRNA High-Throughput Sequencing.Insects · 2022Article
- Colony-Level Viral Load Influences Collective Foraging in Honey Bees.Frontiers in insect science · 2022Article
- Article
- Pollen nutrition fosters honeybee tolerance to pesticides.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Essential macronutrients are critical to the fitness and survival of animals. Many studies have shown that animals regulate the amount of protein and carbohydrate they eat for optimal performance. Regulation of dietary fat is important but less often studied. Honeybees collect and consume floral pollen to obtain protein and fat but how they achieve the optimal balance of these two macronutrients is presently unknown. Here, using chemically defined diets composed of essential amino acids and lipids (lecithin), we show that adult worker honeybees actively regulate their intake of lipids around optimal values relative to the amount of protein in their diet. We found that broodless, nurse-age worker honeybees consume foods to achieve a ratio between 1:2 and 1:3 for essential amino acids to lipid or ∼1.25:1 protein to fat. Bees fed diets relatively high in fat gained abdominal fat and had enlarged hypopharyngeal glands. In most cases, eating diets high in fat did not result in increased mortality. Importantly, we also discovered that the total quantity of food the bees ate increased when they were given a choice of two diets relatively high in fat, implying that dietary fat influences bee nutritional state in a way that, in turn, influences behaviour. We speculate that dietary fat plays a critical role in maintaining workers in the nurse-like behavioural state independently of the influence of queen pheromone.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.