Honeybees craft specialized 'baby food' for larvae
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- University of Oxford researchers, led by Prof. Geraldine Wright, found in a Current Biology study that honeybees mix stored pollen into specialized 'baby food' — bee bread and royal jelly — whose amino acid profile closely matches larval tissue needs.
- The research team compared essential amino acid profiles of honeybee tissues with pollen from 99 species of British flowering plants, finding most single pollen sources were a poor nutritional match for bee tissue composition.
- Bees fed artificial diets matching their own tissue amino acid profile ate more, gained more body mass, and consumed a more protein-rich balance than bees fed poorly matched diets.
- Histidine emerged as a key regulator — when relatively high, bees ate less food overall, cutting back on both protein and carbohydrate intake.
- Nurse bees convert mixed pollen stores in the hive into 'bee bread' and glandular secretions including royal jelly, which the study found more closely match bee tissue amino acid profiles than any single pollen source tested.
- Professor Wright concluded that pollinator-friendly planting schemes should prioritize diversity of pollen sources — not just the number of flowers — since a varied diet may be essential for bees to obtain the right balance of nutrients.
- The study was a collaboration between the University of Oxford, University of Southampton, Newcastle University, Lancaster University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Why it matters: Bees are critical agricultural pollinators, and this study — which surveyed 99 British plant species — shows that a single pollen source rarely meets their amino acid needs. The practical implication for conservation programs and landowners: planting scheme design should shift from maximizing flower count to maximizing pollen diversity, potentially reshaping how habitat restoration is done for struggling wild bee populations.
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