Perturbation of normal behaviors (e.g., nursing and foraging) in honey bee colonies by any external factors would immediately reduce the colony’s capacity for brood rearing, which can eventually lead to collapse of entire colony. To investigate the effects of brood rearing suppression in the biology of honey bee workers (nurse and forager), the gene-set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed for the transcriptomes of worker bees with or without their brood rearing being suppressed, from which functional profiles of pathways under influences by each condition were identified. Blocking of normal labor (i.e., nursing or foraging) induced the over-representation of pathways related with reshaping of worker bee physiology, suggesting that transition of labor is physiologically reversible. In addition, brood rearing suppression appeared to result in the reduction of neuronal excitability and aggressiveness in both forager and nurse, which would be necessary to manage the in-hive stress under unfavorable conditions

• Kyungmun Kim(Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University)
• Ju Hyeon Kim(Department of Veterinary Animal Sciences, University of Massachusettes)
• Young Ho Kim(Department of Applied Biology, College of Ecology & Environmental Science, Kyungpook National University)
• Si Hyeock Lee(Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University)