Abstract
Honey bees have a highly developed nest homeostasis, for example, maintaining low CO2 levels and stable nest temperatures at 35°C.We investigate the role of nest homeostasis in deactivating phenolic compounds present in the nectar of Aloe littoralis. We show that the phenolic content in nectar was reduced (from 0.65% to 0.49%) after nectar was incubated in a nest of Apis cerana, and that it was reduced still more (from 0.65% to 0.37%) if nectar was mixed with hypopharyngeal gland proteins (HGP) of worker bees before being placed inside a nest. HGP had little effect on samples outside a nest, indicating that nest conditions are necessary for HGP to deactivate phenolics in nectar. Consequently, the highly controlled nest homeostasis of honey bees facilitates direct deactivation of phenolics in nectar, and plays a role in the action of HGP as well.
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Acknowledgement
We thank Prof. Xiangxiong Zhu, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Adjunct Prof. Michael D. Breed, University of Colorado at Boulder and Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Garden, the Chinese Academy of Sciences for English improvement. We are especially grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and substantial contributions to improve the presentation. This work is supported by a grant of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (award number: 39930030)
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Liu, F., He, J. & Fu, W. Highly controlled nest homeostasis of honey bees helps deactivate phenolics in nectar. Naturwissenschaften 92, 297–299 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-005-0629-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-005-0629-x