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BlueSky post led me to this story on #Bees [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-06
Worried about the bees?
Me, too.
I’ve lived in the same house since 1980, that’s 45 years now. I have a half acre on a deadend road with seven other large lots. Lots of trees and shrubbery. Back in the day, there were lots of bees around. The past decade they’ve gotten fewer and fewer.
I’ve been quite worried about it for some time, because without bees, there soon won’t be enough food for humans.
I caught this on BlueSky this morning from author John Scalzi (Hugo Winner for Red Shirts in 2013):
x This feels like a spot of good news www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202... — John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2025-08-23T23:31:03.538Z
The link in the post goes to Science Daily:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250822073807.htm
Scientists found the missing nutrients bees need — Colonies grew 15-fold
Date:
August 23, 2025
Source:
University of Oxford
Summary:
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. From the article: In the new study, the research team succeeded in engineering the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica to produce a precise mixture of six key sterols that bees need. This was then incorporated into diets fed to bee colonies during three-month feeding trials. These took place in enclosed glasshouses to ensure the bees only fed on the treatment diets. Key findings: By the end of the study 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.
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.
Notably, the sterol profile of larvae in colonies fed the engineered yeast matched that found in naturally foraged colonies, suggesting that bees selectively transfer only the most biologically important sterols to their young.
There is a lot more to read at the link, but I thought just the summary was worth sharing!
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/6/2342104/-BlueSky-post-led-me-to-this-story-on-Bees?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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