Measuring Metabolic Rate in honeybees

How do we measure metabolic rate in an organism?

Metabolic rate is considered a fundamental feature of all living organisms and at CSU’s Honeybee Behavior lab, I utilize flow-through respirometry to quantitatively measure a honeybee’s metabolic rate. This mechanism allows us to accurately measure how much carbon dioxide a bee emits when it performs different behaviors. In a nutshell, we measure how hard these bees are breathing.

This is made possible by first using a FoxBox respirometry setup (Sable Systems) that controlled outflow and inflow of air into a closed system containing our honeybee. We then use ExpeData software to accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide produced by this bee and plot it on a time axis.

From this data, we carefully monitor and record various behaviors the bee is exhibiting such as flying and resting. When I pair this with carbon dioxide output data (VCO2) I use R studio to calculate a Flight Metabolic Rate (FMR) and a Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) for each individual.