Adam Dolezal and Irene Newton aim to understand how interactions between honey bees and their symbiont, Bombella apis, protect brood from environmental perturbations such as nutritional, chemical, and viral stress. In prior research, the Newton lab has found that B. apis protects brood from nutritive stress. The Dolezal lab has found that both adult and larval nutrition impacts virus susceptibility in honey bee workers. Their project aims to connect these two lines of inquiry, identifying links between B. apis colonization, nutritional supplementation, and susceptibility to viral and chemical stress in both honey bee workers and queens. Currently, the Dolezal lab is further exploring the dimensions of the mutualistic effects of B. apis in larval honey bees by measuring the combined potential of their nutritional buffering and xenobiotic detoxification abilities. When raised naturally inside a hive, honey bee larvae are exposed to an enormous variety of outside influences, ranging from pesticides accumulated in the wax cells to diseases spread by parasitic mites. Manipulating the larvae in vitro using artificial diets and sterile well plates allows for a much finer level of control over their nutritional, chemical, and microbial environments and can better tease apart the interactions between larval microbiomes and their influence on honey bee health.