Research seeks insights on honeybee diets for healthier hives
The old health idiom “you are what you eat” also applies to honeybees.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists are studying how pollen diversity affects the nutritional quality of honeybee diets, including asking foundational questions about how nutrition can sustain healthier colonies.
The project is exploring honeybee nutrition across multiple landscapes and will p rovide a multidimensional analysis of pollen as a nutritional resource. It will also examine how bees regulate the collection and consumption of pollen.
“Our research focuses on understanding how honeybees choose the best possibl e
roles within the hive.
Bees are social insects, Rangel said, and they divide labor within the hive. They also have different nutritional needs as they age.
The first assignment for adult honeybee workers is as cell cleaners before they undergo a physiological change to become nurse bees around four to 10 days into their lives.
Nurse bees are the main consumers of bee bread made from collected pollen. They consume the bee bread to transform it inside their bodies to produce brood food for the larvae.
The nurses then become middle-aged workers that perform centralized tasks around the hive until they are 20-21 days old when they become foragers.
Forager bees collect pollen for the hive until they die.
The understanding could provide beekeepers, agricultural production or urban development managers with prescribed guidelines for managing crops and landscapes to help honeybees, which are critical contributors to both healthy ecosystems and food production.