Whether the Superiority of Pollen in Diet of Honey Bees is Attributable to Its High Content of Free Proline

Publisher： Entomological Society of America

ISSN： 1938-2901

Source： Annals of the Entomological Society of America, Vol.65, Iss.1, 1972-01, pp. : 270-271

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Abstract

In honey bees, Apis mellifera L., proline is synthesized from glucose (Lue and Dixon 1967), and consequently it is not a dietary essential. Proline converts reversibly to glutamate and α-ketoglutarate. In this way it commonly becomes complexly involved in metabolism. In certain insects, proline supplies energy for flight, and it is involved in formation of cuticle (Gilmour 1961). Blow flies do require proline in their diet (Hodgson et al. 1956), and it is semiessential in other insects (Arai and Ito 1967, Davis 1968). Furthermore, proline stimulated feeding by a pollen-feeding insect (Heron 1965). The presence or absence of low levels of proline in diet fed to young adult worker bees did not give conclusive differences in adult growth (de Groot 1952).