Scientists Have a New Plan to Save the Honeybees

Researchers at the University of Oxford have created a new "superfood" designed to help honeybees survive amid environmental pressures like habitat loss and changing climate. The supplement, developed after 15 years of study, contains the six sterols—special lipids essential to bee development—that bees typically obtain from pollen and nectar. According to study co-author Geraldine Wright, the superfood can provide bees with complete nutrition when natural pollen is scarce, potentially reducing the impact of severe winters and poor flowering seasons.

Trials have shown promising results. Bee colonies fed the supplement produced up to 15 times more young bees that survived to adulthood. This could offer a significant boost for pollinators, which are critical to agriculture, aiding in the pollination of 70% of the world's top crops. In recent years, honeybee populations have suffered major declines. US beekeepers have reported annual losses of 40% to 50% of their colonies over the past decade, and similar trends are seen in the UK.

Nick Mensikov, a beekeeper in South Wales, tells the BBC he lost 75% of his colonies the previous winter despite plentiful food in the hives, underscoring the nutritional challenges that bees face. Conventional bee supplements lack key nutrients, putting colonies at risk, especially over the winter when bees rely on stored food. The new supplement replicates a balanced diet for bees, with researchers using gene-edited yeast to manufacture the essential sterols, per the research published in the journal Nature. "This breakthrough discovery ... has immense potential to improve outcomes for colony survival," Danielle Downey, head of the honeybee research nonprofit Project Apis m., says in a release. Downey wasn't involved with the study.