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.
  • Jarix@lemmy.worldEnglish
    381·
    6 days ago

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

    Uhh m not crazy right, that’s the same thing?

    • adj16@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      6 days ago

      I’m with you, it’s confusing. But I think what it means is this:

      The study ran for 90 days. Non-sterol bees had stopped doing bee sex by then. Sterol bees were doin it all the way up to the end of the 90 days - and then the study ended. We can therefore assume they wanted to continue having freaky beedsm sex for even longer.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      9·
      6 days ago

      one group continued to the end of the study period, the other group had stopped by the same time

      or, one group stopped doing a thing, and the other group didn’t show signs of stopping

    • AceBonobo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      73·
      6 days ago

      Gotta be AI bullshit. But I’m reading it as, group A never stopped while group B stopped breeding at the end of the period.

  • Godort@lemmy.caEnglish
    272·
    7 days ago

    “Oh, so we can kill 15 times more before it becomes an issue” - Monsanto, probably

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    7 days ago

    For anyone wanting to save the bees, look into making bee hotels. If you have a power drill and a variety of small bits, easy money. Spend a half hour watching videos, not too much to learn. They’re basically free to make if you can lay your hands on some wood or non pressure-treated lumber. Chunk the old one every year and roll an new one.

    Damned cool when you see your first guests having waxed off the entrance hole!

    • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      We need more food and less pesticides for our bees more than houses for bees in the US.

      No really, it’s really bad. Flowering seasons across much of the south and west have been reduced, farmland and pesticides everywhere, people don’t grow gardens in suburbs and everything is suburbs.

      In the early 2000’s I could drive across country and have to stop at every gas station to clean my windshield. Now on the same exact route my windshield is almost spotless after 5 hours on the road. This is really, really bad. It’s not just bees, it’s everything.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Preaching to the choir. The windshield thing is what originally brought home the scope of this disaster. We travel from Florida to Tupelo several times a year. 700 mile round trip through the South, never had to clean bugs, not once. Imagine that.

        I’m letting our yard go largely wild, and in any case we’ve loaded up with flowers. We have several tiny ponds, 15G-150G, that are all natural that are breeding frogs and dragonflies. They also act as mosquito traps because the fish and tadpoles, and hopefully dragonfly larva, eat the babies.

        At our 2.5 acre camp in the boonies I’ve been trying to get flowers in there. Dumped a 5G bucket of crepe myrtle seeds last fall, not sure any took. LOL, mostly failing on that project. I want to get some hives going, but there just can’t be enough flowers around in most seasons.

        I’m trying man.

    • angrystego@lemmy.worldEnglish
      72·
      7 days ago

      Also please check whether honey bees are native in your area. If they’re not (or if there’s too many of them) it leads to decline of other bee species and threatens other pollinators and rare plant species.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        7 days ago

        Not sure what that has to do with my comment? Bee hotels are for solitary bees, not honey bees. Exactly what we want!

        • angrystego@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          6 days ago

          Yep, sorry. Still I kind of think it’s worth repeating over and over, so treat is as not aimed at you :)

    • sfjvvssss@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Also, stop using pesticides/ herbicides in you garden, plant native flowering plants, mow after they finished flowering, let grass grow a bit, maybe mow alternating areas.

      • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        The only thing that may save some bees is the general laziness and apathy that most people have about the outdoors now. It won’t happen in the vast, vast stretches of HOA monitored hell that has sprawled across most of the USA, but at least in other neighborhoods I expect the people letting their yards overgrow will help a bit.

        Still, everything gets washed in pesticides all the time. I don’t have high hopes for our ecosystem anymore.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      7 days ago

      Sorta. If you’re a beekeeper I can see this being a major deal. Not clear on how hard this yeast is to grow or how well the process scales.

      Bees got a threefold problem, and we need to get at the roots of the issue.

      • Pesticides and herbicides. Won’t happen, but governments need to ban these products for consumers, restrict them to professionals. Karen and Ken don’t need a perfect lawn sacrificing the bottom of the food chain.

      • We need to grow more, and more indigenous, plants of all kinds. Working on it in my yard, doing well so far. Last year the bumblebees were so loud I thought it was construction on the next block over. :)

      • Verona mites are a monster issue. They came to America in the 90s and are whipping our ass. Haven’t looked into beekeeping for awhile, not sure where we’re at with that.

    • Frozengyro@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      7 days ago

      Good for bee keepers, but most plants are pollinated by wild bees. So this could help, but doesn’t really change much in the grand scheme.

  • Bosht@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    Hope they can get it to mass production. I have some bees in the area and would love to help the little guys.

  • FarraigePlaisteaċ@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    7 days ago

    I thought that honeybees were the last bees that we should be saving since they harm native bee populations, which are move vulnerable.

    • Sludgehammer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      7 days ago

      The European honeybee in the Americas is kinda a double edged sword. It’s an invasive species, which both steals resources from and spreads diseases to native bees. However, for better or worse at this point a good portion of agriculture is dependent upon the European honey bee.

      … And they produce honey, which I like.