Queen longevity

[steve1958]

I read the following on a Scottish Bee suppliers site:

'New research has proved that queens live longer if left in mating Nucs for over 3 weeks before caging. (4 weeks preferred)'.

Why would this be?

 

[Hivemaker.]

'New research has proved that queens live longer if left in mating Nucs for over 3 weeks before caging. (4 weeks preferred)'.

Could you please supply a link to the research paper, but not the commercial website of course.

 

[steve1958]

No. I read this on a commercial Sales site, and question why or indeed ask if this would be true.

 

[theengraver]

In the honey bee (Apis mellifera), depending on what they are fed, female eggs become either workers or queens. Although queens and workers share a common genome, the maximum lifespan of queens is an order-of-magnitude longer than workers. The mechanistic basis of this longevity difference is unknown. In order to test if differences in membrane composition could be involved we have compared the fatty acid composition of phospholipids of queen and worker honey bees. The cell membranes of both young and old honey bee queens are highly monounsaturated with very low content of polyunsaturates. Newly emerged workers have a similar membrane fatty acid composition to queens but within the first week of hive life, they increase the polyunsaturate content and decrease the monounsaturate content of their membranes, probably as a result of pollen consumption. This means their membranes likely become more susceptible to lipid peroxidation in this first week of hive life. The results support the suggestion that membrane composition might be an important factor in the determination of maximum lifespan. Assuming the same slope of the relationship between membrane peroxidation index and maximum lifespan as previously observed for mammal and bird species, we propose that the 3-fold difference in peroxidation index of phospholipids of queens and workers is large enough to account for the order-of-magnitude difference in their longevity.

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

In the honey bee (Apis mellifera), depending on what they are fed, female eggs become either workers or queens. Although queens and workers share a common genome, the maximum lifespan of queens is an order-of-magnitude longer than workers. The mechanistic basis of this longevity difference is unknown. In order to test if differences in membrane composition could be involved we have compared the fatty acid composition of phospholipids of queen and worker honey bees. The cell membranes of both young and old honey bee queens are highly monounsaturated with very low content of polyunsaturates. Newly emerged workers have a similar membrane fatty acid composition to queens but within the first week of hive life, they increase the polyunsaturate content and decrease the monounsaturate content of their membranes, probably as a result of pollen consumption. This means their membranes likely become more susceptible to lipid peroxidation in this first week of hive life. The results support the suggestion that membrane composition might be an important factor in the determination of maximum lifespan. Assuming the same slope of the relationship between membrane peroxidation index and maximum lifespan as previously observed for mammal and bird species, we propose that the 3-fold difference in peroxidation index of phospholipids of queens and workers is large enough to account for the order-of-magnitude difference in their longevity.

ADMIN: Please can we have a rule insisting that all posts be in English?

[Or Latin, of course.]

Dusty

 

[theengraver]

the above is a snipit of a long long paper not only from one group of entomologist research in to life span of bees and others and boils down to the first weeks of life of Queens & workers as for Queens not only is it important that the queens establish laying but also the way they are fed In the first weeks of life without a break ie: the distruption of being caged and transported and re-introduction into a new hive

 

[Luminos]

ADMIN: Please can we have a rule insisting that all posts be in English?

[Or Latin, of course.]

Dusty

Church latin or proper latin?

 

[MuswellMetro]

the above is a snipit of a long long paper not only from one group of entomologist research in to life span of bees and others and boils down to the first weeks of life of Queens & workers as for Queens not only is it important that the queens establish laying but also the way they are fed In the first weeks of life without a break ie: the distruption of being caged and transported and re-introduction into a new hive

thanks for the post

 

[alanf]

the above is a snipit of a long long paper

Exp Gerontol. 2007 Jul;42(7):601-9. Epub 2007 Mar 3.
Extended longevity of queen honey bees compared to workers is associated with peroxidation-resistant membranes.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17446027

 

[theengraver]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17446027

As i said a snipit but far from the full papers of the three study groups but you need to be on a Phd level to even start understanding them so im not even going to attempt them

 

[Hivemaker.]

Thank you Alan. From that snippet i still see no mention of queens living any longer by being left in a mating nucs for three weeks.

 

[enrico]

I got bored after the second line....sorry, poor attention span,

 

[theengraver]

Thank you Alan. From that snippet i still see no mention of queens living any longer by being left in a mating nucs for three weeks.

Have a go at reading the full papers if you have a spare few weeks and a Biological scientist to help you with the big words as I pointed out it is the break in the feeding cycle in the first few weeks of life that can affect the life span of a Queen bee and by removing the queen from the mating hive the cycle is broken. Unfortunatly there is no simplified version with bold type words " QUEENS LIVE LONGER BY BEING LEFT IN THE MATING HIVE FOR 3 WEEKS" to save reading and understanding the research in full
Now you can throw scorn as much as you like on the reseach that has been done by the various Centres of Biological Sciences University`s around the world but I think i will go with them!

 

[Hivemaker.]

" QUEENS LIVE LONGER BY BEING LEFT IN THE MATING HIVE FOR 3 WEEKS"

How much longer?

 

[theengraver]

Read the research papers there on the web if you search for them

This is starting to feel a lot like talking to the Flat Earth Society
Just because you don't believe or understand doesn't make it untrue.
....The End....

 

[Hivemaker.]

Read the research papers there on the web if you search for them

I was assuming you had already read the paper, so could provide the answer to save others from doing so.

 

[Skyhook]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17446027

I just tried looking, but without a login, it wanted $40.00.

It seems to make sense though- I've seen other articles pointing to early nutrition as key to bee lifespan (particularly protein level and quality), so it seems feasible that a break in feeding, if it occurred, could have an effect.

Apparently virus level also has a major effect,ie if a queen is infected with virus, or if the drones she mates with are, then her daughter queens will be smaller and shorter-lived.

I can't give you a paper for this I'm afraid, I got it from a talk the other day by the head of the national bee unit.

 

[DanBee]

My attempt to interpret, not to patronise those who have commented but to provide clarity as to what this (paid for) paper summary is saying:

Although queens and workers share a common genome, the maximum lifespan of queens is an order-of-magnitude longer than workers.
Queens and workers are both variants of the honeybee female, but queens live for years rather than weeks.

The mechanistic basis of this longevity difference is unknown. In order to test if differences in membrane composition could be involved we have compared the fatty acid composition of phospholipids of queen and worker honey bees.
We don't yet know why this happened, so we looked at one particular aspect based on a hunch.

The cell membranes of both young and old honey bee queens are highly monounsaturated with very low content of polyunsaturates.
In queens, one aspect of the cells (that make up their tissues and organs) is more like butter than margarine, regardless of age.

Newly emerged workers have a similar membrane fatty acid composition to queens but within the first week of hive life, they increase the polyunsaturate content and decrease the monounsaturate content of their membranes, probably as a result of pollen consumption.
Workers cells start out with the same buttery characteristic as queens' cells, but within a week this characteristic switches to look like margarine.

This means their membranes likely become more susceptible to lipid peroxidation in this first week of hive life.
Speculation of how this conversion from butter to margarine might take place - i.e. the theory that they looked to test.

The results support the suggestion that membrane composition might be an important factor in the determination of maximum lifespan.
The results we found suggested that the theory was heading in the right direction.

Assuming the same slope of the relationship between membrane peroxidation index and maximum lifespan as previously observed for mammal and bird species, ...
This same butter-to-margarine effect has been seen in birds and mammals, and because we have more (or more reliable) data from studying them, we'll use the general trends to predict what it might mean for honeybees.

... we propose that the 3-fold difference in peroxidation index of phospholipids of queens and workers is large enough to account for the order-of-magnitude difference in their longevity.
The mechanisms probably responsible for one characteristic of queens' body cells remaining buttery (whilst workers cells switch from butter to margarine) is probably the mechanism that affects whether the two types of female bees live for weeks or years.

My comment:

So... the study is looking to understand why queens and workers have greatly differing lifespans. Yes, one possible explanation of the difference comes from workers gorging on pollen, but it doesn't look at the quality of queens, rather something that might differentiate queens from workers.

Newly-emerged queens are largely ignored by workers, so must feed themselves. They must be almost as hungry as newly-emerged workers, so do we know whether queens do or do not feed heavily on pollen in the first week of life? The answer to this would indicate whether the pollen-gorging suggestion is valid or not as part of this differentiation between queens and workers.

 

[For want of a better word]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfjeiASuK7c&feature=relmfu[/ame]



Well... can you?

 

[alanf]

Thought I might have access to the full Experimental Gerontology paper beyond the abstract, turns out not to be one of the journals I can access. However.

The researchers at Wollongong in Australia are part of the Metabolic Research Centre, they're biochemists working with extracts in test tubes. They're interested in the longevity of various animals and if that relates to the fat composition of membranes, see this publication list: Bees are just one example of where they have looked at membrane composition and tried to work out whether it's relevant along with echidna, naked mole rat and various birds. There is a freely available review from the group that includes the following:

Honeybees provide another example of variation in longevity within a species. Female honeybees can be either long-living queens (with longevity measured in years) or short-living workers (with a lifespan of only weeks), depending on what they are fed (Winston 1987). Long-living queens have very low levels of polyunsaturation in their membrane lipids (and thus a low PI) throughout their life. Larvae of workers and newly emerged workers have a membrane fatty acid composition similar to that of queens (with a low PI); however, after the first week of life in the hive, the PI of the membrane lipids is substantially increased due to an elevated content of polyunsaturates (Haddad et al. 2007). This is likely due to the consumption of pollen (which has high content of polyunsaturates) by workers during this first week. Queens are never allowed to consume pollen, being fed mouth-to-mouth by worker bees throughout their life. These findings are illustrated in Fig. 4 and suggest that the connection between membrane fatty acid composition is not restricted to vertebrates.

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/5/808.long

They are using bees as an example to extend the scope of their research outside vertebrates, they are not interested in bee husbandry. The research does show that pollen has higher levels of polyunsaturates, so the author makes the suggestion that the change is dietary. That "Queens are never allowed to consume pollen, being fed mouth-to-mouth by worker bees throughout their life." is not what the bee books say; newly emerged queens feed freely in the days after emergence. Whatever the detail, or the differences in diet, the results do show that there are changes in fat composition in workers within a week of emergence that do not occur in queens.

The queen samples are only shown at a week and two years. The difference in diet and membrane composition is established long before whatever age a laying queen is caged, There could be other metabolic changes in queens caused by removing queens from laying at different ages but there is no evidence here, it is not what is being researched.

By the way, polyunsaturates and monunsaturates are all plant derived, there's no suggestion of "butter", that may be a confusion with polysaturated fats.