Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is widely used in investigations involved in gut flora, and the gut flora of their workers have been demonstrated to be completely colonized within 7 days of emergence. However, colonization rules of the gut flora remain largely unknown. Here, metagenomic 16S rRNA gene data were generated to study colonization rules of the gut flora in workers by detecting dynamics in diversity and the relative abundance of gut bacteria across 14 time points post-emergence from pupal case, including 0 pupation-hours/control, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, 96, 108, 120, 132, 144, and 156 post-emergence-hours (peh). Via comparison analysis of bacterial operational taxonomic units across these time points, diversity values of the gut flora presented the maximum at 0 peh. Among these points, 0–24 peh maintained the relatively higher diversity than the other time points. Furthermore, dynamic changes in several core gut bacteria (e.g., Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Frischella, Snodgrassella, and Gilliamella) were analyzed in detail, and their biological function was linked to several host biological characteristics such as ecological adaptation, aging, gut health, dietary alterations and diversity, digestion and absorption, and metabolisms during colonization. This study is valuable for the understanding of colonization rules and the contribution of the gut flora to workers.

西方蜜蜂（Apis mellifera) 被广泛用于涉及肠道菌群的研究，他们的工人的肠道菌群已被证明在出现后 7 天内完全定植。然而，肠道菌群的定植规则在很大程度上仍然未知。在这里，生成宏基因组 16S rRNA 基因数据，通过检测蛹病例出现后 14 个时间点的多样性动态和肠道细菌的相对丰度来研究工人肠道菌群的定殖规则，包括 0 蛹小时/对照，出现后 12、24、36、48、60、72、84、96、108、120、132、144 和 156 小时 (peh)。通过对这些时间点的细菌操作分类单元的比较分析，肠道菌群的多样性值在 0 peh 时呈现最大值。在这些点中，0-24 peh 比其他时间点保持了相对较高的多样性。详细分析了乳酸杆菌、双歧杆菌、弗里舍菌、斯诺德格拉斯菌和Gilliamella），它们的生物学功能与生态适应、衰老、肠道健康、饮食改变和多样性、消化和吸收以及定殖过程中的代谢等几种宿主生物学特征有关. 这项研究对于了解定植规则和肠道菌群对工人的贡献很有价值。