Just like people, honeybees need nutritious food to stay strong and healthy. More than two dozen beekeepers throughout the United States are giving their bees a chance to test a new, high-energy drink formulated especially for the hardworking insect.
The new beverage may bolster the pollination prowess of domesticated honeybees, Apis mellifera.
The smoothie mix is a tan powder, about the texture of wheat flour. The formula provides protein and carbohydrate needed to keep adult honeybees well nourished when their regular foods – pollen and nectar from flowers – aren’t readily available.
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The powdered formula is the work of entomologist Gordon Wardell of Arizona-based SAFE Research and Development LLC and USDA colleague Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, research leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Ariz.
The dry mix is less expensive to produce and less cumbersome to store than liquid formulas. According to the scientists, beekeepers should be able to mix the powder with corn syrup or other sugary syrup.
Then, using conventional equipment , they could pump the high-energy drink into hives for hungry adult bees to sip.
Supplemental foods for honeybees aren’t new. But the formulas that the Arizona researchers are creating should sidestep a problem in some of the supplements developed earlier. Those older foods didn’t provide the nutrients essential to worker bees.
Worker bees raised on those formulas would eventually stop producing a royal jelly for feeding to developing bees. This caused production of new bees to soon stop and the colony no longer flourished.
Vigorous colonies are especially important today, since many honeybee hives in the U.S. have been hit hard in recent years by mites and other pests.
