Pollen and Wax Production

Abstract

The usefulness of pollen as a foodstuff for the rearing of brood has long been suspected (Hornbostel 1744; Hunter 1792), but its possible relationship to the production of wax was mooted on theoretical grounds only in the mid-nineteenth century (Dzierzon 1861; Schmid and Kleine 1865). The surmise that pollen is of nutritional importance was first given experimental support in the work of Peterka (1939), who showed that a diet including pollen enhanced the longevity of bees. Bees, and many other kinds of animal, can subsist for a long time in the absence of dietary protein. However De Groot (1953) performed an extensive series of experiments, the results of which established that the greatest net increase in the mass and nitrogen content of bees is obtained when they are fed a normal diet containing pollen. The greatest rates of growth of young workers occur in the first week following eclosión, a period in which the brood food or hypopharyngeal glands of the nurse bees reach their peak.