A strong immune response in young adult honeybees masks their increased susceptibility to infection compared to older bees.

Honeybees, Apis mellifera, show age-related division of labor in which young adults perform maintenance ("housekeeping") tasks inside the colony before switching to outside foraging at approximately 23 days old. Disease resistance is an important feature of honeybee biology, but little is...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: James C Bull, Eugene V Ryabov, Gill Prince, Andrew Mead, Cunjin Zhang, Laura A Baxter, Judith K Pell, Juliet L Osborne, Dave Chandler
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2012-12-01
Series:PLoS Pathogens
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3531495?pdf=render