Immune responses of honeybees and their fitness costs as compared to bumblebees

Immune responses of invertebrates imply more than developing a merely unspecific response to an infection. Great interest has been raised to unveil whether this investment into immunity also involves fitness costs associated to the individual or the group. Focusing on the immune responses of honeybees, we use the well-studied insect bumblebee for comparison. Bumblebees are capable of producing specific immune responses to infections whereas this has not been assessed for honeybees so far. We investigated whether a prior bacterial encounter provides protection against a later exposure to the same or a different bacterium in honeybees. Additionally, we studied whether the foraging activities of honeybees and bumblebees are affected upon immune stimulation by assessing the flight performance. Finally, the acceptance behavior of nestmates toward immune-challenged honeybees was determined. Results show that despite stimulating the immune system of honeybees, no protective effects to infections were found. Further, honeybees were not affected by an immune challenge in their flight performance whereas bumblebees showed significant flight impairment. Immune-challenged honeybees showed lower survival rates than naive individuals when introduced into a regular colony. Here, we reveal different immune response-cost scenarios in honeybees and bumblebees for the first time. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13592-014-0318-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.