The superfood created by Oxford scientists who seeks to save the bees from their disappearance

Foreground of a melífera bee with fur, wings, eyes and visible antennas

- Author, Georgina Rannard
- Author's title, Climate and Science correspondent, BBC
2 hours

Scientists have developed a “superfood” for honey bees that could protect these insects against threats from climate change and habitat loss.

The colonies of bees that consumed the supplement during the tests had up to 15 times more bee young that reached adults.

Helpper bees are a vital part of food production and contribute to pollinating 70% of the main crops in the world.

“This technological advance provides bees all the nutrients they need to survive, which means that we can continue feeding them even when there is not enough pollen,” the main author, Professor Geraldine Wright, told BBC News, Professor Geraldine Wright, from the University of Oxford.

“It's really a great achievement,” he says.

A wooden frame inside a hive that has many bees gathered around hexagonal holes — Photo foot, Bees around the world are threatened by viral diseases and climate change.

Hyed bees worldwide face a serious decline due to nutrient deficiencies, viral diseases, climate change and other factors. In the United States, annual colonies losses ranged between 40% and 50% in the last decade and are expected to increase.

The United Kingdom beekeepers have also faced serious problems.

Nick Mensikov, president of the Cardiff, Vale and Valleys beekeepers association in Wales, told BBC News that last winter he lost 75% of his colonies and that the same has been repeated throughout the south of Wales.

“Although hives have been full of food, bees have decreased. Most bees survived until January and February, and then disappeared,” he explains.

A man with an orange beekeeper with hives and trees in the background — Photo foot, Nick Mensikov has been hung for 15 years and sells honey in southern Wales.

The search for adequate sterols

Bees feed on pollen and nectar of flowers that contain nutrients, including lipids called sterols, necessary for their development.

They produce honey in the hives, which becomes their food source during winter, when the flowers have stopped producing pollen.

When beekeepers get honey to sell it or, more and more, when there is not enough pollen available, they give supplementary food insects.

But that food is composed of protein flour, sugar and water, and has always lacked the nutrients that bees need. It is as if humans followed a diet without carbohydrates, amino acids or other vital nutrients.

The sterol has always been very difficult to manufacture, but Professor Wright has directed a group of scientists for 15 years to identify what sterols need exactly bees and how to design them.

A woman with a pink shirt and a beekeeper brown suit in a field with blue and green hives and a greenhouse behind her — Photo foot, Professor Geraldine Wright began working on the nutrition of bees after the beekeepers told her that many of her bees were dying.

In the Oxford Laboratory, the doctoral student Jennifer Chennells showed us small transparent boxes of honey bees in an incubator she feeds with different foods she has prepared.

Use kitchen utensils that can be found at home to prepare raw ingredients, and form white and bright food tubes.

“We put ingredients in something like the mass of a cookie, with different proteins, fats, different amounts of carbohydrates and the micronutrients that bees need. We try to find out what they like most and what is better for them,” he explains.

Enter the tubes into the boxes and bees bite the mixture.

In this laboratory, through the genetic edition, Professor Wright's team managed to create a yeast capable of producing the six sterols that bees need.

“It is a great advance. When my student was able to design the yeast to create the sterols, he sent me a photo of the chromatogram resulting from work,” he says, referring to a graph of the structure of the substance.

“I still have it on the wall of my office,” he says.

A man with an orange apicultor suit holds a wooden frame with bees rising on him. Is standing in a field with trees and plants — Photo foot, Beekeepers often feed bees with supplementary food to maintain them.

The “superfood” was supplied to the bees of the laboratory hives for three months.

The results showed that the colonies fed with this meal had up to 15 times more bee offspring that reached adulthood.

“When bees have complete nutrition they should be healthier and less susceptible to diseases,” says Professor Wright.

The expert indicates that the food would be especially useful during summers like this, in which flowers with flowers seem to have stopped producing early.

“It is very important in years when summer advances and bees will not have enough pollen and nectar to spend the winter,” he says.

“The more months they spend without pollen, the more nutritional stress they will suffer, which means that beekeepers will have greater losses of those bees during the winter,” he explains.

Now there are larger -scale tests to evaluate the long -term effects of food on the health of honey bees, but the supplement could be available to beekeepers and farmers within two years.

The study has been directed by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Royal Botanical Garden of Kew, the University of Greenwich and the Technical University of Denmark.