Honey bees obtain macro and micronutrients including proteins, minerals, vitamins, and lipids from pollen that are essential for brood rearing, maturation, adult longevity, and overall colony development. Among these, nectar is the main source of carbohydrates necessary to meet energy requirements. Honey bees can visit various food sources at the same time and covers the distance of around 10 kilometers to collect primary food resources such as nectar and pollen that are stored in their colonies as honey and beebread. Similarly, sufficient food availability in the honey bee colony is necessary for the growth and development. Foraging dynamics of the bees are implicated in the maintenance of populations and their colony heath. Although, multiple factors negatively affect bee populations including habitat loss, predators, parasites, diseases, pesticides exposure, and climatic changes. They produce honey, royal jelly, propolis, and beebread, and provide pollination services for both wild and agricultural crops. The honey bee is the most important eusocial insect, that plays a critical role in maintaining the natural ecosystem and is directly beneficial to mankind. The funders didn't play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The authors also appreciate the support of the Research Centre for Advanced Materials Science (RCAMS) at King Khalid University Abha, Saudi Arabia through a project number RCAMS/KKU/002-21. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are included in the manuscript.įunding: This study was partially supported by Pir Mehr Ali Shah (PMAS) Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Received: AugAccepted: SeptemPublished: October 11, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Ahmad et al. PLoS ONE 16(10):Įditor: Adnan Noor Shah, Anhui Agricultural University, CHINA This study highlights the potential of supplemental diets to improve the bee’s health and colony development when the pollens availability and diversity are insufficient.Ĭitation: Ahmad S, Khan KA, Khan SA, Ghramh HA, Gul A (2021) Comparative assessment of various supplementary diets on commercial honey bee ( Apis mellifera) health and colony performance. The proportion of biological parameters was less in the control group as compared to other treatments. Further, pollen load, worker-sealed brood area, population strength, and honey yield differed significantly when Diet 1 was consumed instead of other supplemental diets. Our results indicated that honey bees consumed a significantly higher amount of Diet 1 (45 g soybean flour + 15 g Brewer’s yeast + 75 g powdered sugar + 7.5 g skimmed milk + 7.5 g date palm pollen + 200 mL sugar syrup supplement with Vitamin C) followed by others supplemented diets. The treatment groups were supplied with patties of pollen substitute diets, whereas sugar syrup was given to the control group. We conducted this study to test the influence of various supplemental diets on foraging effort, pollen load, capped brood area, population density, and honey yield. However, the extent to which pollen substitute protein feeding affects honey bee colony parameters is not fully known. The quality of the supplemental diet influences the development and strength of the colony, especially during the pollen dearth period in the surrounding environment. A healthy honey bee stock is critical to the beekeeping industry and the sustainability of the ecosystem.
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