Scientists have developed a breakthrough food supplement that could help save honeybees from devastating declines. By engineering yeast to produce six essential sterols found in pollen, researchers provided bees with a nutritionally complete diet that boosted reproduction up to 15-fold. Unlike commercial substitutes that lack key nutrients, this supplement mimics natural pollen’s sterol profile, giving bees the equivalent of a balanced diet.
I thought the reason they die was pollution. I’m confused at why some new nutrient would save them.
There’s a lot of problems bees (both honey bee and native bees) are facing. There’s varroa mite, a virus spread by mites, pesticides, pollution, habitat loss, monoculture… a lot of stuff. However, healthy bees are more resilient, so healthy hive is much more likely to shrug off a event that could be “the straw that broke the camels back” for a weakened malnourished hive.
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(long as you leave seinfeld out of this)
I expect there are dozens of different things that influence how well a hive does, some good, some bad. Maybe having better nutrition overpowers the effect of pesticides, varroa mites, etc.