> The cold-stressed assay using temps in the 80s isn't my idea of cold-stressing bees.
I thought the same, and could not grock it, so I emailed Judy Chen, who explained that in their pilot studies, they had exposed bees to various temperatures that were below the "optimized hive temperature" of 34-35 C. Any temperatures below 28 C lead to immediate mortality, so they were unable to monitor the bees' host responses to pathogens at anything lower than 28 C. So, this was how 28 C was picked for use in the final study.
Apparently, the bees do suffer from pathogens far more from "chill", and can endure a far narrower range of temperatures when in "cages" and infected with various pathogens.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around all that - for decades, I've been pulling frames out of hives from late January until late November with casual aplomb, and the bees have moved around on the combs at ambient temps down to the 30s F (0 C), and flown around down to the 55 F or so (13 C). And I am sure that a goodly percentage of my bees had one pathogen or another, and many were certain to have more than one. But 28 will kill them if they can't warm up? Why has no one seen this in a hive setting?
I've always thought "caged bee studies" a very unrealistic scenario, but here, where they wanted to test pathogen "resilience", they clearly showed far less resilience at lower temps, so the caged bee study did what it was intended to do. I'm not going to obsess over the exact temperatures here, what's important is the biochemistry revealed.
But I'm left musing that 28 C (82 F) is warm enough for me, but not for a caged bee. I'm gonna have to think that over, its going to gnaw at me.
Disclaimer - I have NOT yet read the paper. I have other stuff to do. (But before I do read it, I'll take a look at the COLOSS Bee Book to see what makes for "optional caged bee conditions".)
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