Nano colonies: Rearing honey bee queens and their offspring in small laboratory arenas

Honey bees create complex societies of self-organized individuals in intricate colonies. Studies of honey bees are carried out in both the field and the laboratory. However, field research is encumbered by the difficulties of making reliable observations and environmental confounders. Meanwhile, laboratory trials produce data that are not field realistic as they lack key characteristics of a natural colony. Additionally, advances in honey bee research have been hindered without reliable methodology to rear queens in the laboratory. Here we provide a new system to reliably produce queens and worker brood in the laboratory and describe how this system fits with artificial insemination of queens as a step towards a continuous self-contained source of bees. The process creates a bridge between field research and laboratory trials and provides a secure system for contagious or regulated elements while maintaining many of the intrinsic characteristics of a honey bee colony.