Early Queen Development in Honey Bees: Social Context and Queen Breeder Source Affect Gut Microbiota and Associated Metabolism
Duan C. Copeland, Kirk E. Anderson, Brendon M. Mott
Abstract
In modern agriculture, honey bee queen failure is repeatedly cited as one of the major reasons for yearly colony loss. Here we discovered that the honey bee queen gut microbiota alters according to early social environment and is strongly tied to the identity of the queen breeder. Like human examples, this early life variation appears to set the trajectory for ecological succession associated with social assimilation and queen productivity. The high metabolic demand of natural colony assimilation is associated with less bacterial diversity, a smaller hindgut microbiome, and a downregulation of genes that control pathogens and oxidative stress. Queens placed in less social environments with low metabolic demand (queen banks) developed a gut microbiota that resembled much older queens that produce fewer eggs. The queens key reproductive role in the colony may rely in part on a gut microbiome shaped by social immunity and the early queen rearing environment.