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Voltage‐gated Ca2+ channels are key transducers of cellular excitability and participate in several crucial physiological responses. In vertebrates, 10 Ca2+ channel genes, grouped in 3 families (CaV1, CaV2 and CaV3), have been described and characterized. Insects possess only one member of each family. These genes have been isolated in a limited number of species and very few have been characterized although, in addition to their crucial role, they may represent a collateral target for neurotoxic insecticides. We have isolated the 3 genes coding for the 3 Ca2+ channels expressed in Apis mellifera. This work provides the first detailed characterization of the honeybee T-type CaV3 Ca2+ channel and demonstrates the low toxicity of inhibiting this channel. Comparing Ca2+ currents recorded in bee neurons and myocytes with Ca2+ currents recorded in Xenopus oocytes expressing the honeybee CaV3 gene suggests native expression in bee muscle cells only. High‐voltage activated Ca2+ channels could be recorded in the somata of different cultured bee neurons. These functional data were confirmed by in situ hybridization, immunolocalization and in vivo analysis of the effects of a CaV3 inhibitor. The biophysical and pharmacological characterization and the tissue distribution of CaV3 suggest a role in honeybee muscle function.

The antennal lobe (AL) is the first olfactory center of the insect brain and is constituted of different functional units, the glomeruli. In the AL, odors are coded as spatiotemporal patterns of glomerular activity. In honeybees, olfactory learning during early adulthood modifies neural activity in the AL on a long-term scale and also enhances later memory retention. By means of behavioral experiments, we first verified that olfactory learning between the fifth and eighth day of adulthood induces better retention performances at a late adult stage than the same experience acquired before or after this period. We checked that the specificity of memory for the odorants used was improved. We then studied whether such early olfactory learning also induces long-term structural changes in the AL consistent with the formation of long-term olfactory memories. We also measured the volume of 15 identified glomeruli in the ALs of 17-day-old honeybees that either experienced an odor associated with sucrose solution between the fifth and eighth day of adulthood or were left untreated. We found that early olfactory experience induces glomerulus-selective increases in volume that were specific to the learned odor. By comparing our volumetric measures with calcium-imaging recordings from a previous study, performed in 17-day-old bees subjected to the same treatment and experimental conditions, we found that glomeruli that showed structural changes after early learning were those that exhibited a significant increase in neural activity. Our results make evident a correlation between structural and functional changes in the AL following early olfactory learning.

Tuberculosis of the pancreas is a rare gastrointestinal tract entity. This unusual manifestation of tuberculosis should be included in the differential diagnosis of high-risk patients presenting with a pancreatic mass.

Olfactory learning in the honeybee was investigated using the conditioned proboscis extension reflex on restrained individuals. We compared, under the same experimental conditions, the most commonly used conditioning procedures, i.e. 1 trial, 3 massed trials (1 min inter-trial intervals), and 3 spaced trials (10 min inter-trial intervals) procedures, using linalool as the conditioned stimulus. Two experiments were performed in which worker bees were subjected to: (1) a single test at different times (30 s to 14 days) after the conditioning procedure; (2) a first test within 3 h after the conditioning procedure, and were then retested daily (up to 5 tests). The memory trace of a learnt odorant stimulus could last for the lifetime of the bee, even after a single association with sugar. Repeated tests with 1 day inter-test duration induced a strong decrease of the response level, this effect being more pronounced after a 1-trial conditioning.