Abstract The tiny population of the endemic Maltese honey bee ( A. m. ruttneri ) is threatened by anthropogenic influences, such as urbanisation, habitat loss, and unsustainable agricultural practices, but most prominently importation commercially important non-native stock. To obtain data on colony life cycle parameters to measure its apicultural performance in relation imported ligustica unde...

Life expectancy of honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) is of general interest to gerontological research because its variability among different groups of bees is one of the most striking cases of natural plasticity of aging. Worker honey bees spend their first days of adult life working in the nest, then transition to foraging and die between 4 and 8 weeks of age. Foraging is believed to be primari...

Amidst ongoing declines in honey bee health, the contributory role of the newer systemic insecticides continues to be intensely debated. Scores of toxicological field experiments, which bee scientists and regulators in the United States have looked to for definitive causal evidence, indicate a lack of support. This paper analyzes the methodological norms that shape the design and interpretation...

BACKGROUND Learning of arbitrary relations is the capacity to acquire knowledge about associations between events or stimuli that do not share any similarities, and use this knowledge to make behavioural choices. This capacity is well documented in humans and vertebrates, and there is some evidence it exists in the honeybee (Apis mellifera). However, little is known about whether the ability fo...

To explore immune system activation in the honey bee, Apis mellifera L., larvae of four ages were exposed through feeding to spores of a natural pathogen, Paenibacillus larvae larvae, to cells of a diverse set of related nonpathogenic bacteria, and to bacterial coat components. These larvae were then assayed for RNA levels of genes encoding two antibacterial peptides, abaecin and defensin. Larv...

A restrained honey bee can be trained to extend its proboscis in response to the pairing of an odor with a sucrose reward, a form of olfactory associative learning referred to as the proboscis extension response (PER). Although the ability of flying honey bees to respond to visual cues is well-established, associative visual learning in restrained honey bees has been challenging to demonstrate....

Because bees fly around, visit flowers and chase mates, we conclude intuitively that they see things as we do. But their vision is unexpectedly different, so we say it is anti-intuitive. Detailed tests have demonstrated separate detectors for modulation of blue and green receptors, edge orientation (green only), and areas of black. The edge detectors are about 3° across, independent, and not re...