Scientists are Helping Bees Get Their Mojo Back!

A talented global team of researchers led by Oxford University scientists, have come up with a breakthrough “superfood” food supplement for bees. This mimics the key nutrients bees usually get from pollen, and has the potential to reverse the worrying decline of honeybees. Covered in Science Daily, the research showed how making this superfood part of their dietary mix significantly boosted the health of the bee colonies in the controlled trials.

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After identifying this bee nutrition bottleneck, the researchers then added precisely fermented pollen sterols to the diet of bees being studied. As some of these sterols are rare, and hard to harvest in bigger quantities, the researchers turned to fermentation to produce a targeted blend of sterols.

“This technological breakthrough provides all the nutrients bees need to survive, meaning we can continue to feed them even when there’s not enough pollen,”  senior research author, Professor Geraldine Wright at the University of Oxford, told BBC News.

More on this ‘Beetiful’ Diet and Why Bees are Essential to the Food Cycle
Bees are crucial to our ecosystem as they are the Earth’s primary pollinators. As they forage for nectar, they transfer pollen between plants, allowing them to reproduce. This process sustains our global food supply (over 70 percent of leading global crops according to the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich), boosts biodiversity, and supports nearly all terrestrial wildlife habitats, as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) explains. Bees also give us high quality food (honey, royal jelly, and pollen), as well as products like beeswax, propolis, and honey bee venom, while beekeeping is an essential income source for many rural dwellers.

Honeybees globally are facing alarming declines. This is due to nutrient shortfalls, viral diseases, and climate change among other factors. In the US, annual colony losses have ranged between 40-50 percent in the last decade, and are expected to increase, according to BBC News. 

Honeybees make honey in hives, which become their food source over winter when flowers stop producing pollen. When beekeepers take out honey to sell, or when there’s not enough pollen available, they give the insects supplementary food. 

Bees in a hive can look busy, the researchers discovered, but if their diet is missing a viral  nutrient class they pinpointed as pollen sterols, and fed on calories and protein alone, the colony may not make it, especially when experiencing limited floral diversity when foraging, also known as “forage gaps.”

Collaborating with colleagues at the  Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, the University of Greenwich, and the Technical University of Denmark, the scientists created a diet mimicking the crucial nutrients bees typically get from pollen. This supplement the researchers produced contains all six essential sterols which were previously impossible to synthesize in the lab.

As Intelligent Living reports, after identifying a group of overlooked protein molecules that serve as health-boosting micronutrients, sterols, the scientists added an engineered yeast sterol blend to the bee nutrient mix for a three-month period. This led to a dramatic increase in health of the colony given the adapted diet, while unsupplanted bees did not thrive. 

In controlled trials, both brood development and pupation (the act or process by which an insect larva develops into an early adult one or pupa,) surged, sometimes by a 15-fold jump under the sterol-complete diet 

Significantly, these trials didn’t test field realities such as viruses, pesticides, certain forage gaps, and mites, with the researches emphasizing that the management of these will also determine colony health even when nutrition improves. The researchers are optimistic about scaling their approach, however. After larger-scale trials, the superfood could be available to beekeepers and farmers within two years.

How the Public Can Help
While this superfood supplement can act as a bridge during forage gaps, it is not a replacement for maintaining diverse flowering landscapes.

Members of the public can also play a role in boosting bee health. Intelligent Living emphasizes that  sterol access heavily relies on local landscapes. However, agricultural intensification, and compressed bloom seasons end up narrowing the available pollen menu. 

The good news is that increasing floral biodiversity remains the best and most reliable way of supporting pollinators in home gardens and small patches of nearby land. Beneficial flowering plants include wild geranium and willow in the spring, sunflowers and hyssop in the summer, and goldenrod and aster in the fall. 

Householders with yards or balconies should avoid blooms that flower over short periods, leaving pollinators stranded for the rest of the season. Instead, a range of flowering plants, with staggered blooming times, will be optimal for bees. In addition, shallow water dishes provide essential bee hydration, while the provision of sheltered nesting options, aka “bee hotels” are also beneficial to bees.