The more the better: Fatty acids are predictive markers of honey bee, Apis mellifera, worker longevity

Fatty acids (FA), stemming from nutrition, form triglycerides that are key components for insect energy reserves. In managed Apis mellifera colonies, supplementary feeding is common practice, yet micronutrients and microbiota (i.e. B-vitamins and probiotics) are often neglected. Given that B-vitamins are obligate cofactors for FA metabolism, and probiotics likely play key roles as well (i.e. Lactobacillus spp. synthesize B-vitamins), understanding how they contribute to FA acquisition remains unknown. Indeed, FAs are established predictors to A. mellifera longevity, and as such, are a logical point of interest in long-lived “winter” bees, where A. mellifera colony losses typically occur. Here, in a hoarding cage trial, freshly emerged adult winter workers were exposed to antibiotics (ABX) to decouple innate benefits associated to native gut microbiota, or left unexposed to ABX (N=72 cages, N=2088 experimental workers). Subsequently, all workers were fed different diets containing either..., The data here were collected at the Institue of Bee Health (Bern, Switzerland), in autumn 2019. Subesequent Fatty Acid (FA) analysis took place at the University of Fribourg (Fribourg, Switzerland). The data has been processed (i.e. analyzed) with the open-source software R, and the script and the corresponding data are available here for download. Please refer to the publication (materials and methods) for in-depth details about data collection, FA extraction, and data analysis., , # The more the better: Fatty acids are predictive markers of honey bee, Apis mellifera, worker longevity

##### Brief description of the study

This dataset contains information from winter *Apis mellifera* worker bees, whom underwent a hoarding cage trial, and were subject to different dietary treatments.

At 3 time increments, worker bees from each group were sampled, and processed through GC-FID to identify and quantify their fatty acid profiles.

##### Description of the data and file structure

The following dataset is entitled “Brown et al Plos One 2024”, and it contains one tab with 31 tables of data:

**Cage**: This refers to the cage that the experimental workers were kept in. Each cage had 26 bees/cage.
**Median Age**: This refers to the median age for the entire treatment group.
**Mean Age**: This refers to the mean age for the entire treatment group.
**Day**: This refers to the sample time point from each treatment.  There were three total sample points: Day 7, 14, and 21.
*...