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The European honey bee, Apis mellifera L., is the single most valuable managed pollinator in the world. Poor colony health or unusually high colony losses of managed honey bees result from a myriad of stressors, which are more harmful in combination. Climate change is expected to accentuate the effects of these stressors, but the physiological and behavioral responses of honey bees to elevated temperatures while under simultaneous influence of one or more stressors remain largely unknown. Here we test the hypothesis that exposure to acute, sublethal doses of neonicotinoid insecticides reduce thermal tolerance in honey bees. We administered to bees oral doses of imidacloprid and acetamiprid at 1/5, 1/20, and1/100 of LD50 and measured their heat tolerance 4 h post- feeding, using both dynamic and static protocols. Contrary to our expectations, acute exposure to sublethal doses of both insecticides resulted in higher thermal tolerance and greater survival rates of bees. Bees that ingested the higher doses of insecticides displayed a critical thermal maximum from 2˚C to 5 ˚C greater than that of the control group, and 67%–87% reduction in mortality. Our study suggests a resilience of honey bees to high temperatures when other stressors are present, which is consistent with studies in other insects. We discuss the implications of these results and hypothesize that this compensatory effect is likely due to induction of heat shock proteins by the insecticides, which provides temporary protection from elevated temperatures
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This content will become publicly available on December 15, 2025
Bees remain heat tolerant after acute exposure to desiccation and starvation
ABSTRACT Organisms may simultaneously face thermal, desiccation and nutritional stress under climate change. Understanding the effects arising from the interactions among these stressors is relevant for predicting organisms' responses to climate change and for developing effective conservation strategies. Using both dynamic and static protocols, we assessed for the first time how sublethal desiccation exposure (at 16.7%, 50.0% and 83.3% of LD50) impacts the heat tolerance of foragers from two social bee species found on the Greek island of Lesbos: the managed European honey bee, Apis mellifera, and the wild, ground-nesting sweat bee Lasioglossum malachurum. In addition, we explored how a short-term starvation period (24 h), followed by a moderate sublethal desiccation exposure (50% of LD50), influences honey bee heat tolerance. We found that neither the critical thermal maximum (CTmax) nor the time to heat stupor was significantly impacted by sublethal desiccation exposure in either species. Similarly, starvation followed by moderate sublethal desiccation did not affect the average CTmax estimate, but it did increase its variance. Our results suggest that sublethal exposure to these environmental stressors may not always lead to significant changes in bees' heat tolerance or increase vulnerability to rapid temperature changes during extreme weather events, such as heat waves. However, the increase in CTmax variance suggests greater variability in individual responses to temperature stress under climate change, which may impact colony-level performance. The ability to withstand desiccation may be impacted by unmeasured hypoxic conditions and the overall effect of these stressors on solitary species remains to be assessed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1950805
- PAR ID:
- 10593176
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Company of Biologists
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Experimental Biology
- Volume:
- 227
- Issue:
- 24
- ISSN:
- 0022-0949
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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