>
> >Isolation from workers also led to fewer bacterial species than those in
> contact with workers. (But look at the mean separation letters at the top
> of Figure 2- a bit murky).  And workers had higher bacterial counts and
> richer bacterial communities.


This is a difficult experiment to interpret.  It's not completely clear as
to whether the caged queens were placed into separate nuclei, which would
have added a serious exposure variable.  Workers inoculate their own guts
via the process of cell cleaning over their first few days of life.  Queens
may also consume honey, a small amount of beebread, and perhaps other
inocula from the combs during their first few days (pers obs via
microscopy).

The gut microbial community in any bee's gut is largely a function of the
diet consumed.  Queens have a very different microbial community than
workers, since they consume a diet consisting solely of jelly, and thus
only microbes adapted to digest jelly waste in the queen's hindgut will
flourish (as opposed to the microbes in worker hindguts, which consume the
undigested pollen exines).

As far as how this applies to commercial queens, few producers cage their
virgins--instead, they are allowed to emerge in mating nucs.  So the study
would only apply to those few who hold virgins in cages.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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