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.
For anyone wanting to save the bees, look into making bee hotels. If you have a power drill and a variety of small bits, easy money. Spend a half hour watching videos, not too much to learn. They’re basically free to make if you can lay your hands on some wood or non pressure-treated lumber. Chunk the old one every year and roll an new one.
Damned cool when you see your first guests having waxed off the entrance hole!
Easy money? Do they pay rent?
*easy honey
take it
If you can collect. All I get are pollinated plants. YMMV.
I researched that, maybe it’s just in Australia but apparently the bees here don’t use those bee hotels? They apparently just get stacked with earwigs. I read the best thing you can do for bees here is plant native flowering plants like the Bottle Brush, and let leaves biodegrade naturally instead of hoovering em up.
Also please check whether honey bees are native in your area. If they’re not (or if there’s too many of them) it leads to decline of other bee species and threatens other pollinators and rare plant species.
Not sure what that has to do with my comment? Bee hotels are for solitary bees, not honey bees. Exactly what we want!
Yep, sorry. Still I kind of think it’s worth repeating over and over, so treat is as not aimed at you :)
Also, stop using pesticides/ herbicides in you garden, plant native flowering plants, mow after they finished flowering, let grass grow a bit, maybe mow alternating areas.