{"id":660075,"date":"2026-08-27T23:47:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T23:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/660075\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T23:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T23:47:15","slug":"bumblebees-may-self-medicate-when-their-colony-faces-fungal-pathogen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/660075\/","title":{"rendered":"Bumblebees May Self-Medicate when Their Colony Faces Fungal Pathogen"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a new study<\/a> published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris)<\/a> exposed to a brood-killing fungus shifted their foraging habits toward nectar laced with a natural antimicrobial compound, offering a rare glimpse of behavior consistent with self-medication in a social insect.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Debeuckelaere<\/p>\n

Debeuckelaere et al. used robotic flowers to test the hypothesis that bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) modify nectar choice after pathogen exposure, focusing on quercetin, a common nectar secondary compound with antimicrobial activity. Image credit: Josef Pichler.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe field of zoopharmacognosy examines how animals use natural compounds for medicinal purposes<\/a>, such as alleviating pain, fighting infections, or protecting against parasites,\u201d said Dr. Mar\u00eda Pozo from the University of Valladolid and her colleagues from KU Leuven in Belgium.<\/p>\n

\u201cA central behavior within this field is self-medication, which refers to the ability of an organism to consume organic compounds that halt or reduce a current infection or prevent one, despite such compounds being costly to healthy individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis behavior represents a form of adaptive plasticity, whereby individuals modify their diet in response to pathogen pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause medicinal compounds are often toxic or nutritionally suboptimal, self-medication is expected to occur primarily when individuals are infected, whereas healthy individuals should avoid such compounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this study, we investigate whether the social bee Bombus terrestris engages in self-medication behavior when exposed to pathogens.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the study, the authors used robotic flowers to track how bumblebee colonies chose between plain sugar nectar and nectar spiked with quercetin, a flavanol with documented anti-microbial activity against a broad range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, as well as fungi and viruses.<\/p>\n

Colonies were either kept healthy or exposed to one of two pathogens: the fungus Ascosphaera apis<\/a>, which causes chalkbrood disease in bee larvae, or the bacterium Serratia marcescens<\/a>, which infects adult bees\u2019 guts.<\/p>\n

Over five days of free foraging, colonies challenged with the fungus increased both their visits to the quercetin-laced flowers and the time spent feeding there as the experiment progressed.<\/p>\n

Healthy colonies showed no such shift, and colonies exposed to the bacterium did not change their preferences either.<\/p>\n

The researchers suggest this pattern may reflect the different ways the two pathogens affect a colony.<\/p>\n

Because chalkbrood mainly harms bee larvae rather than the foraging adults themselves, the increased interest in quercetin among fungus-exposed colonies may represent social medication, in which worker bees gather compounds that benefit the brood rather than themselves.<\/p>\n

Serratia marcescens, by contrast, primarily affects adult foragers directly, and any medicinal benefit from quercetin against it would likely be less direct, potentially explaining why no shift was observed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese results indicate that pathogen identity shapes behavioral plasticity in nectar foraging and demonstrate the value of robotic flowers for studying adaptive foraging responses to pathogens,\u201d the scientists concluded.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Kamiel Debeuckelaere et al. 2026. Hints of self-medication? Pathogen exposure-dependent foraging decisions of bumblebees. R. Soc. Open Sci 13 (8): rsos260777; doi: 10.1098\/rsos.260777<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) exposed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[278840,278841,1669,39652,53901,278842,278843,53904,18,278844,50410,53905,30661,41303,19,8102,17,183542,6192,27791,133,20696,278845,278846],"class_list":["post-660075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ascosphaera","tag-ascosphaera-apis","tag-bacteria","tag-bee","tag-bombus","tag-bombus-terrestris","tag-buff-tailed-bumblebee","tag-bumblebee","tag-eire","tag-flavanol","tag-flavanols","tag-flower","tag-fungi","tag-fungus","tag-ie","tag-insect","tag-ireland","tag-nectar","tag-pathogen","tag-quercetin","tag-science","tag-self-medication","tag-serratia","tag-serratia-marcescens"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117170147399774162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}