Studies on the flow of nectar in a colony have been conducted in the past by feeding workers radioactivity labeled sugar solution and then sampling afterwards at various time intervals.
Radioactive compounds are expensive, difficult to use and create toxic wastes.
These characteristics limit the usefulness of radioactive labels in experimental studies. We fed sugar solution containing the protein marker to honey bee colonies. Within two hours we detected the protein marker in workers and larvae and in cells on combs in both food storage and brood areas. It is possible that the rapid translocation of the incoming sugar solution to brood combs is a means for workers involved with nectar collection and storage to communicate to brood rearing bees that food resources are entering the colony and brood rearing should continue. On the other hand, if brood rearing bees use the nectar in cells to feed larvae, brood comb would always provide space for food storage bees to deposit nectar loads they receive from incoming foragers.