Frequent occurrence of extreme climate or change of nectar composition

Honeybee is an important pollinator and belongs to complete social insect A normal colony consists of a queen bee, tens of thousands of worker bees, and hundreds of drones By releasing queen mandible pheromone (QMP), queen can not only inhibit the ovarian development of worker bees, but also control the colony to feed new queen and maintain the normal development of the colony A healthy and stable bee colony environment is the premise and basis of all kinds of behavior activities of bees Nectar is the main energy source of bee colony In addition to sugar, it also contains many secondary metabolites, such as phenolic substances Phenolic substances can be divided into: phenolic acids, such as gallic acid; flavonoids, such as quercetin, have antioxidant activities Under environmental stress, such as drought or high temperature, the content of phenolic substances in plant increases, which will lead to the increase of the content of phenolic substances in nectar The preliminary study of the chemical ecology group of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that the increase of phenolic substances in nectar would affect the reaction domain of worker bees to sugar water, resulting in the post feeding reaction of worker bees The relevant research results have been published on physical ecology (35:175-178) In addition, the high concentration of quercetin in the nectar can significantly stimulate the ovarian development of the worker bee, and at the same time, the worker bee "violates the rules" to build a large number of abnormal Royal tables on the nest spleen, indicating that phenolic substances disturb the transfer process of the queen pheromone in the bee colony, enhance the resistance of the worker bee to the queen information, and break the normal order in the bee colony The researchers concluded that in the future of more and more extreme climate change, the bee colony will face more risks due to the change of the composition of nectar Relevant papers have been published in Journal of Chemical Ecology (36:1241-1243).