Bee Colonies Grew 15-Fold on Diet Supplemented Diet with Missing Nutrients

Researchers at Oxford and collaborators engineered yeast to produce six essential sterols found in pollen, creating a nutritionally complete bee supplement that boosted colony reproduction up to 15-fold and could help reverse honeybee population decline.

Can this synthetic sterol-enriched diet be successfully scaled and adopted in real-world beekeeping to not only improve colony survival but also reduce competition with wild pollinators and strengthen global food security?