Scientists make “superfood” that could save the bees

Scientists have developed a “supervision” that could protect animals against threats of climate change and loss of habitat.

The bee colonies that ate the supplement during the tests had up to 15 times more bees for babies who reached adulthood.

Bees are an essential element of food production and contribute to the pollination of 70% of major global cultures.

“This technological breakthrough provides all the nutrients that bees need to survive, which means that we can continue to feed them even when there is not enough pollen,” the teacher’s teacher Geraldine told BBC News at the University of Oxford.

“It’s really a huge success,” she said.

Bees around the world are faced with serious decrees, due to nutrient deficiencies, viral diseases, climate change and other factors. In the United States, losses of annual colonies varied between 40 and 50% in the last decade and is expected to increase.

Beekeepers in the United Kingdom also faced serious challenges.

Nick Mensikov, president of Cardiff, Vale and Valleys Beekeepers Association, told BBC News that he had lost 75% of his colonies last winter and that it had been seen in the south of Wales.

“Although the hives were all full of food, the bees have just decreased. Most bees survived until January, February, then they just disappeared,” he said.

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

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

When beekeepers come out of honey to sell, or, more and more, when there is not enough pollen available, they give insects additional food.

But this food consists of protein, sugar and water flour, and has always missed the nutrients that bees need. It is like humans who follow a carbohydrate -free diet, amino acids or other vital nutrients.

Sterol has always been very difficult to manufacture, but Professor Wright led a group of scientists for 15 years to identify the exact bees of the sterol bees and how to ingest them.

In the Oxford laboratory, doctoral student Jennifer Chennells showed us small transparent bee boxes in an incubator that she feeds with different foods that she has made.

She uses kitchen equipment that you could find at home to make raw ingredients and deploy bright white tubes of food.

“We have put ingredients in what looks like a cookie paste, with different proteins, fats, different quantities of carbohydrates and the micronutrients that the bees need. It is to try to determine what they like the most and what suits them best,” she said.

It pushes the tubes inside the boxes and the bees nibble on the mixture.

It is in this laboratory that, using the genes edition, Professor Wright’s team has achieved yeast that can produce the six sterols that bees need.

“It is a huge breakthrough. When my pupil was able to design the yeast to create the sterols, she sent me a photo of the chromatogram which was the result of the work,” she said, referring to a graph of the substance structure.

“I always have it on the wall of my office,” she explains.

The “supermarket” was supplied with bees in the hives of the laboratory for three months.

The results have shown that the colonies feed food had up to 15 times more bees for babies who have reached adulthood.

“When bees have complete nutrition, they should be healthier and less sensitive to disease,” said Professor Wright.

Professor Wright says that food would be particularly useful during summers like this when flowering plants seem to have stopped producing early.

“It is really important in the years when summer arrived early and bees will not have enough pollen and nectar to spend the winter,” she said.

“The more pollen they go, the more they will face nutritional stress, which means that beekeepers will have greater losses of these bees during the winter,” she explains.

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

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

Research is published in the journal Nature.