
@article {51229,
	title = {Apis florea workers show a prolonged period of nursing behavior},
	journal = {Apidologie},
	year = {2019},
	month = {01/2019},
	abstract = {<p>Studies on behavioral maturation and division of labor in open-nesting honey bee species are scarce as the bee curtain inhibits direct examination of intranidal behaviors. We observed and studied nursing behavior in Apis florea by attaching a foreign comb with open brood to a host colony. Several of the workers that explored the attached comb visited the cells with brood more often and spent more time in cells compared to empty cells. Workers seen inspecting and feeding the brood had well-developed hypopharyngeal glands compared to foragers of their own colony indicating that they are nurses performing nursing behavior. Further, introducing marked 1-day-old workers into the host colony and repeatedly attaching combs with open brood allowed us to estimate the age range of nursing behavior. In our experiments, A. florea workers started to perform significant nursing behavior 8 days after eclosion and continued to show nursing behavior until the age of 28 days, the end of our observation period. Thus, nursing behavior in A. florea appears to be substantially extended relative to A. mellifera .</p>
},
	doi = {10.1007/s13592-018-0618-7},
	author = {Bhagavan, H and Brockmann, Axel}
}
