New Superfood Gives Honeybee Colonies A 15-Fold Baby Boom

New Superfood Gives Honeybee Colonies A 15-Fold Baby Boom

New Superfood Gives Honeybee Colonies A 15-Fold Baby Boom Researchers at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, University of Greenwich, and Technical University of Denmark, have developed a groundbreaking nutritional supplement for honeybees—often referred to as a “superfood”—that dramatically enhances colony health. By engineering the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica to produce six essential sterols—nutrients typically missing in commercial bee feeds—they’ve created a diet that closely mimics the nutritional profile of natural pollen. The results were nothing short of astonishing: colonies fed the sterol-enriched supplement reared up to 15 times more larvae to the pupal stage compared to those on a standard diet. Plus, only those on the enriched diet continued brood production through the full three-month trial period.  This innovation arrives at a critical time, as honeybee populations are severely threatened by climate change, habitat loss, pesticide …