Feeding with plant powders increases longevity and body weight of Western honeybee workers (Apis mellifera)

Beekeepers routinely substitute honey from managed western honeybees, Apis mellifera, colonies with sugar water post-harvest, potentially leading to malnutrition. Although nutritional supplements have been created, a general consensus on proper colony nutrition for beekeeping has yet to be reached. Thus, finding easily obtainable fortified A. mellifera food alternatives is still of interest. Here, we test plant powder-enriched food supplements since a priori evidence suggests plant extracts can enhance dry body weight and longevity of workers. Freshly emerged workers were kept in hoarding cages (N=69 days) and fed either with 50 % (w/v) sucrose solution alone or additionally with one of 12 powders: Laurus nobilis, Quercus spp., Curcuma longa, Hypericum spp., Spirulina platensis, Calendula officinalis, Chlorella vulgaris, Melissa officinalis, Moringa oleifera, Rosa canina, Trigonella foenum-graecum, and Urtica dioica (N=2028 workers total). The dry body weight was significantly increased..., The data were collected during hoarding cage experiments conducted at the Institute of Bee Health in 2022. The data have been processed using the opensource software R (version 4.3.2 (2023-10-31))., , # Feeding with plant powders increases longevity and body weight of Western honeybee workers (Apis mellifera)

The dataset contains Sucrose consumption data, Survival Data, and Dry Weight data

## Description of the data and file structure

All data are found an excel sheet, with tabs for the sucrose consumption, survival, and dry weight.

**Sucrose consumption tab**: Here, there are 4 variables: **cage** (unique ID for each experimental cage), **treatment** (plant species), **day** (time point of measurement), and **loss** (amount of food consumed in milligrams / bee).

**Survival tab**: Here, there are 4 variables: **cage** (unique ID for each experimental cage), **treatment** (plant species), **day** (time point of measurement), **individual** (unique ID assigned to bee in the order they died, i.e. #1 = first bee to die in cage), **removed** (how many bees died / were removed at that time point), and **status** (o = right censored, 1 = died naturally).

**Dry Weight tab** : Here, t...