A Method to Study Honey Bee Foraging Regulatory Molecules at Different Times During Foraging.

The foraging of honey bees is one of the most well-organized and admirable behaviors that exist among social insects. In behavioral studies, these beautiful insects have been extensively used for understanding time-space learning, landmark use, and the concept of learning. Highly organized behaviors such as social interaction and communication are systematically well-organized behavioral components of honey bee foraging. Over the last two decades, understanding the regulatory mechanisms underlying honey bee foraging at the cellular and molecular levels has been increasingly interested to several researchers. Upon the search of regulatory genes of brain and behavior, immediate early (IE) genes are considered as a good tool to begin the search investigation. Our two recent studies have demonstrated three IE genes, namely, Egr-1, Hr38, and Kakusei, playing a role in the daily foraging of bees and their association with learning and memory during foraging. These studies further evidence that IE genes can be used as a tool in finding the specific molecular/cellular players of foraging in honey bees and its behavioral components such as learning, memory, social interaction, and social communication. In this article, we provide the details of the method of sample collection at different times during foraging to investigate the foraging regulatory molecules.

Immediate early gene kakusei potentially plays a role in the daily foraging of honey bees.

kakusei is a non-coding RNA that is overexpressed in foraging bee brain. This study describes a possible role of the IEG kakusei during the daily foraging of honey bees. kakusei was found to be transiently upregulated within two hours during rewarded foraging. Interestingly, during unrewarded foraging the gene was also found to be up-regulated, but immediately lowered when food was not rewarded. Moreover, the kakusei overexpression was diminished within a very short time when the time schedule of feeding was changed. This indicates the potential role of kakusei on the motivation of learned reward foraging. These results provide evidence for a dynamic role of kakusei during for aging of bees, and eventually its possible involvement in learning and memory. Thus the kakusei gene could be used as search tool in finding distinct molecular pathways that mediate diverse behavioral components of foraging.