Physiological Resilience and Health in Bees: From Molecular Mechanisms to Conservation Under Global Change

Bees are facing an unprecedented convergence of threats — climate change, habitat loss, pesticide exposure, nutritional stress, and emerging pathogens — yet our understanding of how they physiologically respond and adapt to these pressures remains fragmented. The physiological systems that govern bee health, from metabolic and immune function to stress tolerance and survival strategies, are central to explaining why some individuals, populations, and species prove more resilient than others. Synthesizing this knowledge has never been more urgent given the accelerating decline of both managed and wild pollinators worldwide.

Despite growing research interest, studies on bee physiology remain dispersed across entomological, ecological, and biomedical journals, limiting visibility and slowing the development of a coherent, cross-disciplinary research community. This is particularly true for work bridging the well-characterized Apis mellifera with the rapidly expanding literature on bumblebees, solitary bees, and other wild pollinators — species whose physiological responses to global change are still poorly understood.

Frontiers in Bee Science offers a unique platform to unite these research threads across species, disciplines, and geographic contexts. This Research Topic seeks to assemble cutting-edge work spanning the molecular, physiological, and applied dimensions of bee health and resilience, serving both fundamental science and conservation-oriented goals.

The scope is broad but integrative, bridging molecular and cellular biology with ecophysiology, field ecology, and conservation biology. We particularly encourage submissions addressing:

1) Metabolic Adaptation and Energy Physiology: How do bees mobilise and allocate energy reserves — including lipids, glycogen, and proteins — across life stages, seasons, and environmental conditions? We welcome research on fat body function, metabolic flexibility, overwintering physiology, diapause, and reproductive maturation across social and solitary bee species.

2) Immune Function and Host–Pathogen Interactions: What molecular and cellular mechanisms underpin immune defence in bees? How do immune investment, antimicrobial peptide expression, and haemolymph protein dynamics shape resistance and tolerance to pathogens, parasites, and other biotic stressors?

3) Nutritional Physiology and Dietary Stress: How does diet quality, pollen diversity, and nutritional deficiency affect bee physiology, immunity, and survival? We encourage research linking nutritional status to broader health outcomes at the individual and colony level.

4) Responses to Environmental Stressors: How do agrochemicals, climate extremes, habitat degradation, and interacting stressors modulate bee physiology? What are the downstream consequences for individual fitness, colony performance, and pollination services?

5) Conservation Physiology and Applied Perspectives: How can mechanistic understanding of bee physiology inform beekeeping practice, species conservation, and the design of mitigation strategies under global change? We welcome translational work connecting physiology to policy and management.

Submissions may include original research, brief reports, mini-reviews, perspectives, and comprehensive reviews. We welcome contributions on all bee species and strongly encourage work on understudied, non-Apis taxa — including wild bees and managed species beyond the honeybee — to build a more inclusive and ecologically grounded understanding of bee health.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Environmental Stressors, Bee physiology, Global Change, Physiological Resilience, Bee Health

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.