Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2024
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Source Publication
Journal of Insect Science
Source ISSN
1536-2442
Original Item ID
DOI: 10.1093/jisesa/iead113
Abstract
Honey bees are important organisms for research in many fields, including physiology, behavior, and ecology. Honey bee colonies are relatively easy and affordable to procure, manage, and replace. However, some difficulties still exist in honey bee research, specifically that honey bee colonies have a distinct seasonality, especially in temperate regions. Honey bee colonies transition from a large society in which workers have a strict temporal division of labor in the summer, to a group of behaviorally flexible workers who manage the colony over winter. Furthermore, opening colonies or collecting bees when they are outside has the potential to harm the colony because of the disruption in thermoregulation. Here, we present a simple and affordable indoor management method utilizing a mylar tent and controlled environmental conditions that allows bees to freely fly without access to outdoor space. This technique permits research labs to successfully keep several colonies persistently active during winter at higher latitudes. Having an extended research period is particularly important for training students, allowing preliminary experiments to be performed, and developing methods. However, we find distinct behavioral differences in honey bees managed in this situation. Specifically learning and thermoregulatory behaviors were diminished in the bees managed in the tent. Therefore, we recommend caution in utilizing these winter bees for full experiments until more is known. Overall, this method expands the research potential on honey bees, and calls attention to the additional research that is needed to understand how indoor management might affect honey bees.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Bawden, Trevor; Dolezal, Adam G.; and Cook, Chelsea N., "Indoor Tent Management for Extending Honey Bee Research Season: Benefits and Caveats" (2024). Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications. 972.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/bio_fac/972
Comments
Published version. Journal of Insect Science, Vol. 24, No. 3 (May 2024). DOI. © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.