![]() To understand the relationship between individual bee lifespan and colony success we used an established honey bee population model (BEEHAVE) to simulate the predicted effects of decreased worker lifespans. In response to this, we again turned to historical record and found a relationship between this trend and a decline in the average amount of honey produced per colony per year in the US over the last 5 decades. While researching the history of water provisioning in cage studies, we observed that the median lifespan of caged honey bees has been declining in the US since the 1970’s, from an average of 34.3 days to 17.7 days. In an initial experiment, we showed that caged honey bees provisioned with various types of water (deionized, 1%NaCl in deionized, or tap) have greater median lifespans than those that did not. While honey bee colonies are superorganisms, experiments that measure the response to stressors often use caged individuals to allow for inference in a controlled setting.
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