Failure to provide water decreases caged bee longevity and decreased worker honey bee longevity can explain high rates of colony loss in the US

The high loss rates of honey bee colonies drive research for solutions aimed to mitigate these losses. While honey bees are often viewed as a superorganism, experiments that measure the response to stressors of caged individuals allow for inference in a controlled setting. In an initial experiment, we show that caged honey bees provisioned with various types of water have greater median lifespans than those that are not. While researching the history of water provisioning in cage studies, we observed that the median lifespan of caged honey bees has been declining in the US since the 1970’s, from an average of 34.5 days to 17.7 days. In response to this, we again turned to historical record and found a relationship between this trend and a decline in the amount of honey produced per colony over the same time period. We then wanted to further understand the relationship between individual bee lifespan and colony success. Using an established honey bee population model, we simulated the decrease in historic worker lifespans, which revealed declines in downstream measures of colony population, overall honey production, and colony lifespan. Last, the colony loss rates obtained from population modeling allowed us to further model what might happen in a beekeeping operation where lost colonies are replaced. The end result were loss rates reflective of what beekeepers experience today, which suggests the average lifespan of individual bees plays a role in the loss of entire colonies.