A new design for honey bee hoarding cages for laboratory experiments

Abstract

Honey bees are the subject of research around the world due to their great economic importance and current population declines (vanEngelsdorp and Meixner, 2010). Many studies cannot be conducted at the colony level. Controlled cage experiments provide insight into behavioural interactions (Elzen et al., 2001), diseases (Martín-Hernández et al., 2009), nutritional requirements (Altaye et al., 2010) and effects of insecticides and genetically engineered plants on these important pollinators (Malone et al., 1999; Medrzycki et al., 2003).