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.
  • dumnezero@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Beekeepers provide colonies with pollen substitutes, but these feeds do not sustain brood production because they lack essential sterols found in pollen.

    So they were being starved by the bee farmers. Got it.

      • Paragone@mander.xyzEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Farmers provide their animals, bees included, with what feed they can buy.

        The fact that animal-feed is chemically-deficient isn’t the fault of the farmers, it is the fault of shoddy standards in animal-feed being more profitable than quality/integrity’s standards,

        & nobody legislated proper-nutrition-requirements for things like animal-food, baby-food, etc.

        For-profit operations ONLY increase their costs when that increases profits, XOR when they’re coerced into producing correct product/service.

        Basic narcissism-centered economics, that.

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