Game Changing 'Superfood' is Good News For Honeybees

Anything that's good for honeybees is good news for humanity too, as they are a vital part of food production and contribute to pollinating 70 percent of leading global crops.

So, it's potentially very good news that scientists have developed a honeybee superfood to help protect these creatures from the multiple threats they face, including climate change, nutrient deficiencies and habitat loss.

A new study shows that bee colonies that ate the supplement during trials had up to 15 times more baby bees that grew to adulthood. That's a remarkable and very exciting result. "This technological breakthrough provides all the nutrients bees need to survive, meaning we can continue to feed them even when there's not enough pollen," senior author Professor Geraldine Wright at the University of Oxford told BBC News. "It really is a huge accomplishment," she says.

"When the bees have a complete nutrition they should be healthier and less susceptible to disease," Prof Wright says. She says the food would be particularly useful during summers like this one when flowering plants appear to have stopped producing early.

Or, as the Natural Resources Institute puts it: "a precision-engineered yeast supplement, designed to provide essential compounds found in plant pollen, significantly improves honeybee colony reproduction."

Larger-scale trials are now needed to assess the long-term impacts of the food on honeybee health, but the supplement could be available to beekeepers and farmers within two years.

The study, published in the journal Nature, was led by University of Oxford, working with Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, University of Greenwich, and the Technical University of Denmark.