Fatty acids influence honey bee worker ability to learn brood odors

Honey bee colonies consume pollen to satisfy their dietary requirements for proteins and lipids. Young worker bees consume almost all of the pollen coming into the hive, while foragers consume mostly nectar. Young bees consume pollen because it provides the nutrients required for the production of brood food. Young bees also play an integral role in hive health by performing hygienic behaviors, such as removing diseased and dead brood. Past research suggests that lipids, specifically fatty acids, impact olfactory learning in honey bees. Thus, we wanted to know how fatty acids affect olfactory learning to colony-relevant odors. We fed young workers diets that were balanced or unbalanced in their ratio of essential omega fatty acids (ω3:ω6). We then measured their ability to learn healthy and damaged brood odors as well as their ability to discriminate between the two. Workers fed balanced diets exhibited higher learning acquisition to brood odors compared to those fed unbalanced diets. In addition, workers fed balanced diets can discriminate between damaged and healthy brood odors better than workers fed unbalanced diets. These results reveal crucial insight about how diet affects young worker olfactory learning, which could have down-stream effects on the hygienic ability of the hive.