Hepburn, H. R., Pirk, C. W. W., & Duangphakdee, O. (2014). The Role of Pollen in Honeybee Colonies. In Honeybee Nests (pp. 145-173). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
The general conclusions that can be reached from the experiments of Goetze and Bessling (1959) on honeybees, and from similar observations on bumble bees by Röseler (1967), are: (1) that protein must be available immediately after eclosion for the normal development of the wax glands and for comb construction; and (2) that wax gland development is just as dependent upon protein nutrition as is the development of the hypopharyngeal glands as shown by De Groot (1953).
These results were confirmed and extended by Freudenstein (1960) using small, queenright colonies (with the queen caged) and an initial population of about 850 newly emerged bees. One colony was only fed sugar, the other an unlimited supply of both sugar and pollen. After 2 weeks, the colony that had access to pollen had built 30 cm2 of comb, while the colony fed sugar had constructed nothing.
Hamdorf and Boehm (cf. Boehm 1965) showed that the metabolic rate of tissue, isolated from the fat body of bees fed on pollen, was higher than that of bees fed only sugar water. Because the oenocytes were much larger than the fat cells in old foragers induced to secrete wax again, Boehm (1965) argued that the increased oxygen consumption was due to the activity of the oenocytes during the preparations made by Hamdorf and Boehm. She coupled increased respiration with the larger volume of the oenocytes, and suggested that volume alone indicates activity. Finally, she concluded that there is a direct relationship between pollen feeding and the growth and size of the oenocytes.
note: The wax gland complex of the honey bee worker consists of three cell types, epithelial cells, oenocytes and adipocytes (fat body cells), which act synergistically to secrete wax (Collision, 2015).
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