Andrew F. Brown

Eusocial insect colonies can choose different behaviours to combat the same parasites. While honeybee (HB), Apis mellifera , colonies remove eggs and larvae of parasitic small hive beetles (SHB), Aethina tumida , they encapsulate adults in propolis. It is currently unknown whether there is flexibility in this system. Here, we show encapsulation of eggs by colonies as an alternative to removal. Oviposition sites with or without SHB eggs were introduced into HB field colonies of mixed European origin. After 24 h, sites were removed to measure the propolised area and to quantify the remaining eggs. Further, SHB egg laying depth, and HB worker proboscis length and thickness, were measured. Even though the proboscises were long enough to reach most eggs, the number of eggs before and after introduction did not differ. Instead, HB used more propolis on sites with eggs compared to controls. This suggests decision making by colonies for either egg removal or encapsulation and demonstrates considerable flexibility in social immunity. Such flexibility probably contributes to eusocial insect resilience and calls for efforts to understand colony decision making.

The volume and complexity of scientific literature are expanding rapidly, making it increasingly difficult to extract and synthesise information across studies. This challenge is particularly acute in the biological sciences, where evidence spans multiple levels of organisation and heterogeneous experimental designs. Large Language Model (LLM) pipelines offer a scalable route to evidence synthesis, but many existing approaches lack transparency, modularity, and effective mechanisms for human oversight. We present MetaBeeAI, an open-source, modular pipeline that integrates established LLM techniques into a coherent, auditable workflow for structured data extraction in biology. MetaBeeAI combines modular prompting, multi-pass extraction, and expert-in-the-loop validation within an interface that presents model outputs alongside source text, enabling inspection, correction, and iterative refinement. The pipeline produces machine-readable records of prompts, configurations, and expert annotations, supporting reproducibility and continuous improvement. We apply MetaBeeAI to 924 research papers on bees and pesticides, extracting structured information on species, compounds, exposure designs, and experimental context. Evaluation demonstrates improved consistency, convergence with expert judgement, and robustness across heterogeneous biological studies, highlighting the value of expert-guided refinement. MetaBeeAI provides a transparent and extensible framework for scalable evidence synthesis, supporting reliable integration of LLMs into biological research workflows.

In managed western honey bee, Apis mellifera, colonies, vitamins are often neglected when it comes to SI feeding despite their importance for health. Moreover, the potential links of vitamin feeding to longevity, food consumption and adult dry weight are poorly understood. Finally, comparative nutritional studies of short-lived summer workers and long-lived winter workers are currently lacking. Here, in a fully-crossed design, multivitamin supplementation of vitamins A, D, E, K, C, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B8, B9 and B12 (N = 13), titrated in three different dosages were fed to summer and winter workers in two trials. In standard laboratory hoarding cages, experimental workers were assigned one of eight treatments: Sucrose, Sucrose + Pollen, Vitamin 1, Vitamin 1 + Pollen, Vitamin 2, Vitamin 2 + Pollen, Vitamin 3, Vitamin 3 + Pollen (N = 8 treatments, 26 workers/cage, N = 64 cages/phase, N = 3328 total workers). Regardless of season, significant consumption polynomial trends were revealed; however, no significant differences in sucrose and pollen consumption were found. Likewise, none of the used multivitamin dosages did significantly improve any of the measured parameters. On the other hand, ad libitum access to pollen consistently increased both weight and lifespan, reinforcing pollen as critical to honey bee health. Additionally, the data clearly show that summer and winter workers bees display very similar significant patterns of dry weight and longevity. In particular, summer bees lived longer than winter ones. In light of well-known differences between summer and winter workers in the field, in particular longevity, these results are unexpected. Therefore, improved laboratory settings for honey bee s seem to be required to obtain more biologically relevant data and ultimately improve managed A. mellifera health.

Beekeepers routinely substitute honey from managed Western honeybee, Apis mellifera, colonies with sugar water post-harvest, potentially leading to malnutrition. Although nutritional supplements have been created, a general consensus on proper colony nutrition for beekeeping has yet to be reached. Thus, finding easily obtainable fortified A. mellifera food alternatives is still of interest. Here, we test plant powder–enriched food supplements since evidence suggests plant extracts can enhance dry body weight and longevity of workers. Freshly emerged workers were kept in hoarding cages (N = 69 days) and fed either with 50% (w/v) sucrose solution alone or additionally with one of 12 powders: Laurus nobilis, Quercus spp., Curcuma longa, Hypericum spp., Spirulina platensis, Calendula officinalis, Chlorella vulgaris, Melissa officinalis, Moringa oleifera, Rosa canina, Trigonella foenum-graecum, and Urtica dioica (N = 2028 workers total). The dry body weight was significantly increased in Quercus spp., Hypericum spp., Spirulina platensis, M. officinalis, M. oleifera, and T. foenum-graecum treatments. Further, the longevity was significantly increased in Quercus spp., C. longa, C. officinalis, C. vulgaris, M. officinalis, R. canina, T. foenum-graecum, and U. dioica treatments. Given that plant extracts can enhance A. mellifera health (i.e., phenolics, flavonoids), plant powders possibly provide additional macro- (i.e., proteins, lipids, peptides) and micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) thereby enhancing nutrient availability. Further investigations into the mechanisms underlying these effects and field studies are recommended to validate these findings in real-hive scenarios.

Gut microbiota are known to foster pollen digestion in honey bee workers, Apis mellifera, thereby enhancing longevity and body weight gain. However, it is currently not known how longevity and body weight gain are effected when gut microbiota are reduced in bees with or without access to pollen. Here, using a hoarding cage set-up with freshly emerged summer workers, we manipulated the gut microbiota of half the bees with the antibiotic tetracycline (ABX), and left the other half untreated on a sucrose solution diet. Afterwards, all bees were assigned to either sucrose diets or sucrose plus ad libitum access to pollen (N = 4 treatments, N = 26 bees/treatment, N = 10 replicates/treatment, N = 1,040 total workers). The data confirm that pollen has a positive effect on longevity and body weight in workers with an unmanipulated gut microbiota. Surprisingly, the antibiotics alone also improved the longevity and body weight of the workers fed a strictly sucrose diet, potentially explained by the reduction of harmful bacteria. However, this positive effect was reversed from an observed antagonistic interaction between pollen and antibiotics, underscoring the innate value of natural microbiota on pollen digestion. In conclusion, a combination of adequate pollen supply and an unmanipulated gut microbiota appears crucial to honey bee worker health, calling for respective efforts to ensure both in managed colonies.

Honey stores of Apis mellifera colonies are replaced with sugar water by beekeepers, which may result in malnutrition. Nutritional supplements have been developed, but the importance of bacterial probiotics and vitamins is poorly understood. Given that supplementary feeding with vitamins and probiotics may enhance worker weight and longevity, this might suggest a feasible approach to mitigate winter colony losses. Here, we conducted a laboratory hoarding cage study with freshly emerged winter bees, which were treated with the antibiotic tetracycline to reduce gut bacteria obtained post-emergence and subsequently assigned to feeding regimes: sucrose only, sucrose + pollen, probiotics (low and high dosage), probiotics + pollen (low and high dosage), or b-vitamins (low and high dosage) (N = 8 treatments, 29 workers/cage × 8 replicates). In parallel, another age cohort of bees remained on their frame (= Frame) to establish their gut microbiota and were subsequently fed with sucrose only or sucrose + pollen (N = 2 treatments, 29 workers/cage × 4 replicates). The most beneficial effects on body weights were found in workers given ad libitum access to pollen, notably in the Frame Sucrose + Pollen group, confirming the inherent importance of post-emergent gut flora inoculation and the role of gut bacteria in protein digestion. Furthermore, both Frame groups and the antibiotic-treated workers fed with probiotic low + pollen survived longer than all other groups, highlighting a fundamental host-microbial relationship. On the other hand, our current treatments alone, post-tetracycline, did not yield any positive results. In contrast, high dosages of both probiotic and b-vitamins significantly reduced lifespan compared to their low concentration counterparts, probably due to dysbiosis and toxicity, suggesting that the outcome was dose-dependent. These results highlight that bacterial and b-vitamin supplementation can alter longevity with advisable caution since harmful concentrations appear to exist.

Rhizanthella gardneri R.S.Rogers is an entirely subterranean mycoheterotrophic orchid known only from two isolated populations within south-western Western Australia (WA). This rare species appears restricted to habitats dominated by species of the Melaleuca uncinata complex. R. gardneri purportedly forms a tripartite relationship with Melaleuca1, via a connecting mycorrhizal fungus, for the purpose of carbohydrate and nutrient acquisition. Here, we quantify key climate, soil and vegetation characteristics of known R. gardneri habitats to provide baseline data for monitoring of known R. gardneri populations, to better understand how R. gardneri interacts with its habitat and to identify possible new sites for R. gardneri introduction. We found that the habitats of the two known R. gardneri populations show considerable differences in soil chemistry, Melaleuca structure and Melaleuca productivity. Multivariate analyses showed that both multidimensional scaling (MDS) and principal components analysis (PCA) ordinations of soil chemical characteristics were very similar. Individual sites within populations were relatively similar in all attributes measured, whereas overall northern and southern habitats were distinct from each other. These results suggest that R. gardneri can tolerate a range of conditions and may be more widespread than previously thought, given that there are extensive areas of Melaleuca thickets with similar habitat characteristics across south-western WA. Variability within the habitats of known R. gardneri populations suggests translocation of this species into sites with similar vegetation may be a viable option for the survival of this species.