The implication that provisioning of water for caged bees is a hirtherto unknown and "new" idea is disproven by the existing guidelines of the COLOSS Bee Book Vol 1. The COLOSS Bee Books exist to provide reliably successful and standardized methods for common experimental techniques. The correct peer-reviewed paper that covers the "caged bee" best practices is this, which dates back to 2015, and the section on water cites prior work dating back to 2001 (although I am confident that anyone who cared to look could go back as far as the 1960s and find confirmation of the same basic principles.
https://doi.org/10.3896/IBRA.1.52.1.04
"Standard methods for maintaining adult Apis mellifera in cages under in vitro laboratory conditions"
"7.5. Water
Water is needed for metabolism and cooling, and is generally obtained by caged workers during ingestion of sugar solutions. In nature, water can also act as an important source of minerals (Brodschneider and Crailsheim, 2010), which can be highly variable depending upon source (WHO, 2005). In North America, for example, tap water provides important sources of calcium, magnesium, and sodium, at least for humans (Azoulay et al., 2001). It is not known how these differences may affect caged workers. Water is essential for maintaining worker honey bees in the laboratory. Carbohydrate solutions containing ≥ 50% (weight/volume) water are sufficient for hydration; if any less is provided, or if only sucrose paste is given, then a separate feeder containing tap water must be offered. Pre-trials for testing feeder leakage may be necessary due to the lower viscosity of water than sucrose solution. Tap water can be boiled to kill harmful micro-organisms, but it should be allowed to return to room temperature before it is given to caged workers."
As for intoning that bees live longer WITH water than without as if it were a revelation, well duh! - Navy SERE school, and every Coast Guard safety course stresses that one cannot survive for more than about 3 days without water. I'm impressed that bees denied water lived as long as they did in the study.
What I see here are some mundane and unsurprising results, labeled with a provocative click-bait title. I've seen this before. UMD clearly has a "good" press office, and the better the press office the more risky it is to be a conservative, respectable researcher, quietly toiling away. See attached graphic, which sums up the "Science News Cycle" succinctly.
So, yeah.... water. Don't give the PETA and vegan activists more reasons to hate beekeepers.
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