Verellen Facundo, Palottini Florencia, Estravis-Barcala M Cecilia, Farina Walter M
Laboratorio de Insectos Sociales, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias, CONICET-UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 12;15(1):1756. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-85494-1.
Recently, it has been shown that sugar‑conditioned honey bees can be biased towards a nectarless dioecious crop as kiwifruit. The challenges for an efficient pollination service in this crop species are its nectarless flowers and its short blooming period. It is known that combined non-sugar compounds (NSCs) present in the floral products of different plants, such as caffeine and arginine, enhance olfactory memory retention in honey bees. Additionally, these NSCs presented in combination with scented food improve pollination activity in nectar crops. Here, we evaluated the effect of kiwifruit mimic-scented sugar solution (KM) on colonies located in this crop by supplementing them either with these NSCs individually (KM + CAF, KM + ARG), or combined (KM + MIX). Our results show an increase in colonies' activity after feeding for all treatments. However, the colonies supplemented with the combined mixture (KM + MIX) collected heavier kiwifruit pollen loads and showed an increasing pollen stored area in their hives compared to the KM-treated control colonies. Unexpectedly, the caffeine-treated colonies showed a decrease in the pollen foraging related responses. These results show a combined effect of NSCs that improves honey bee pollen foraging in a nectarless crop, however this activity is impaired when caffeine is used alone for a nectarless crop.
最近的研究表明，用糖处理过的蜜蜂会倾向于无花蜜的雌雄异株作物，如猕猴桃。这种作物高效授粉服务面临的挑战是其无花蜜的花朵和较短的开花期。已知不同植物花部产物中存在的非糖类化合物（NSCs），如咖啡因和精氨酸，可增强蜜蜂的嗅觉记忆保持能力。此外，这些与有香味食物结合的NSCs可提高有花蜜作物的授粉活性。在此，我们通过单独添加这些NSCs（KM + CAF、KM + ARG）或组合添加（KM + MIX），评估了猕猴桃模拟香味糖溶液（KM）对种植这种作物地区蜂群的影响。我们的结果显示，所有处理喂食后蜂群的活动都有所增加。然而，与KM处理的对照蜂群相比，补充组合混合物（KM + MIX）的蜂群采集到的猕猴桃花粉负载更重，且蜂巢中储存花粉的面积增加。出乎意料的是，用咖啡因处理的蜂群与花粉采集相关的反应有所减少。这些结果表明，NSCs具有综合效应，可改善蜜蜂在无花蜜作物上的花粉采集情况，然而，当单独使用咖啡因处理无花蜜作物时，这种活动会受到损害。
