>These series of cage tests over 10 years ago with "winter" and spring bees fed different diets shows median longevities between 20 to 25 days and much longer for bees in hives.
Neat study. I found the following interesting:
'The correlation between the longevity of worker bees in hives in winter (WH) and in cages in winter (WC) was reasonably strong (r = 0.592, n = 28, P < 0.001). This suggests that WC model the biology of WH. Although queen propagation for breeding is not practical until spring, selecting for winter bee longevity is easier in cages than in field colonies. Unfortunately, the longevity in springtime cages (SC) was poorly correlated with WH (r = -0.131, n = 17, P = 0.616). Longevity in WH was correlated neither with the springtime longevity of pollen-fed (r = -0.162, n = 17, P = 0.534) nor pollen-deprived bees (r = -0.059, n = 18, P = 0.817) in cages. The correlation of longevity of WC and SC, although somewhat stronger, was also not significant (r = 0.373, n = 17, P = 0.141). The longevity of free-flying bees is known to vary according to season (Free and Spencer-Booth, 1959; Fukuda and Sekiguchi, 1966). Perhaps the underlying physiological differences between bees produced in the autumn and those produced in the spring (Maurizio, 1950; Fluri et al., 1977) vary between colonies and so cause this lack of correlation.'
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