Meeting Abstract
Circadian rhythms in honeybees are involved in processes that impact colony survival. Young bees take care of the brood constantly throughout the day and lack circadian rhythms, while foragers use the circadian clock to remember and predict food availability in subsequent days. Based on previous work, it is thought that development of circadian rhythms both in field and laboratory began at around 8-9 days of age for young workers. However, not much is understood about the postembryonic development of circadian rhythms in honeybee workers. Recent studies provide evidence that the colony environment may play a role in enabling the circadian rhythms long before onset of foraging. However, the factors in colony environment that regulate development of circadian rhythm is still unknown. Young bees tend to have a protein-rich diet compared to foragers but whether this diet plays a role in the ontogeny of the circadian rhythm remains to be elucidated. We examined the effects of a protein diet on the ontogeny of circadian rhythms of young bees under controlled laboratory conditions. We hypothesized that the protein diet will increase the number of rhythmic individuals and improve rhythmicity. In addition to increase their survivability. We fed one-day-old honeybees with either sugar diet, sugar with 5% protein and sugar-pollen mixture. Results show that there was no significant difference in the quality or the number of individuals in the development of the rhythm. However, the mortality rate of the bees that had the sugar with 5% protein and sugar-pollen mixture improved significantly in comparison with the bees that were fed only sugar. The data presented in the current study shows that the food given to the honey bees do make a difference in the survivability yet does not affect the development of their circadian rhythm.
