Figure 1. Experimental design.

Two brood frames were removed from 20 colonies of Africanized worker bees Apis mellifera and incubated under controlled laboratory conditions. The newly emerged bees were placed in hoarding cages and fed one of nine artificial diets for 9–12 days. Next, six response variables indicative of the bees’ health and immune function were measured in fed bees (illustration and photograph credit: Azucena Canto and Luis A. Medina-Medina).