{"id":114925,"date":"2025-08-27T23:51:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T23:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/114925\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T23:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T23:51:10","slug":"scientists-engineer-yeast-to-create-honey-bee-superfood-colonies-grew-15-fold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/114925\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Engineer Yeast to Create Honey Bee Superfood \u2013 Colonies Grew 15-Fold"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bees feeding on a synthetic pollen substitute \u2013 credit, Caroline Wood, Oxford U news<\/p>\n

A study team from Oxford University has identified a fermentation method that creates the perfect balanced diet for honey bees who can\u2019t get enough natural pollen.<\/p>\n

Synthetic pollen substitutes are often fed to bees as a dietary supplement to natural pollen, but until now it\u2019s been difficult to replicate the blend of lipids, called sterols, found in pollen that they need to thrive.<\/p>\n

But with Oxford\u2019s bees rearing 15-times more larvae, the scientists from England and Denmark are confident they\u2019ve perfected this sterol recipe.<\/p>\n

While it would obviously be preferable for bees to get all their essential nutrients from wildflowers, declines in flowering native plants across Europe are making this harder and harder. At the same time, honey bees aren\u2019t exactly native either, in fact they often crowd native, solitary bee species and other pollinators out of local ecosystems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If humans are going to unleash thousands of extra pollinators on a pollen-deficient landscape, it\u2019s only right we help provide for their nutrition.<\/p>\n

Scientists from Oxford, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the University of Greenwich, and the Technical University of Denmark, engineered the yeast species Yarrowia lipolytica\u00a0to produce the 6 essential sterols bees need to thrive, and fed it to a study colony enclosed in a greenhouse.<\/p>\n

A control colony was fed a commercially-available synthetic diet.<\/p>\n

Oxford University news reported<\/a> that by the end of the study<\/a> period, colonies fed with the sterol-enriched yeast had reared up to 15 times more larvae to the viable pupal stage, compared with colonies fed control diets.<\/p>\n

Colonies fed with the enriched diet were also more likely to continue rearing larvae up to the end of the three-month period, whereas colonies on sterol-deficient diets ceased brood production after 90 days.<\/p>\n

ALSO CHECK OUT: Pollen Replacement Food for Honey Bees Brings New Hope for Struggling Colonies and the Crops They Support<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFor bees, the difference between the sterol-enriched diet and conventional bee feeds would be comparable to the difference for humans between eating balanced, nutritionally complete meals and eating meals missing essential nutrients like essential fatty acids,\u201d said study lead author Dr. Elynor Moore. \u201cUsing precision fermentation, we are now able to provide bees with a tailor-made feed that is nutritionally complete at the molecular level.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to understand which sterols were missing from the bees\u2019 diet, the team had to employ surgical dissection of individual bees. The authors were then able to identify 24-methylenecholesterol, campesterol, isofucosterol, \u03b2-sitosterol, cholesterol, and desmosterol.<\/p>\n

MORE POLLINATOR-POSITIVE NEWS: European Orchard Bee is Now a Valuable Pollinator in UK\u2013Since the Weather Got Warmer<\/a><\/p>\n

Using CRISPR gene editing, they altered a strain of Yarrowia lipolytica\u00a0yeast to produce these compounds in a sustainable, economic way. Y. lipolytica\u00a0is already used to produce food-grade products for the supplement industry.<\/p>\n

Many commercially-grown fruits require bees and other pollinators to reproduce, and they play a critical role in the supply chains of fruit and nut orchards. Sustaining them with high-quality bee supplement will help guarantee hive resilience and preserve fruit and nut production into the future.<\/p>\n

SHARE This Positive News For Bees Hard At Work In Our Orchards\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bees feeding on a synthetic pollen substitute \u2013 credit, Caroline Wood, Oxford U news A study team from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[5706,29052,9333,299,6613,269,79],"class_list":["post-114925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-bees","tag-crispr","tag-england","tag-food","tag-insects","tag-nutrition","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}