Honeybees, those tireless pollinators responsible for much of the world’s food supply, have been facing mounting threats for years: climate change, habitat loss, pesticides, and a lack of nutritious food sources. But a scientific breakthrough announced on August 20, 2025, could be a game-changer for these vital insects—and for global agriculture as a whole. Researchers from the University of Oxford, working in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, University of Greenwich, and the Technical University of Denmark, have engineered a yeast-based supplement that provides honeybees with all the nutrients they need to thrive, potentially reversing worrying trends in bee population decline.
Published in Nature and reported by The Independent, the new supplement is made from a strain of yeast called Yarrowia lipolytica, genetically engineered to produce a precise blend of six key sterols—24-methylenecholesterol, campesterol, isofucosterol, β-sitosterol, cholesterol, and desmosterol. These sterols are essential for bee development but have long been missing from artificial pollen substitutes that beekeepers rely on, especially as natural pollen sources dwindle due to intensive farming and climate change.
For years, commercial bee feeds have consisted mainly of protein flour, sugars, and oils. While these ingredients offer some nutrition, they lack the specific sterols that bees require for healthy growth and reproduction. "For bees, the difference between the sterol-enriched diet and conventional bee feeds would be comparable to the difference for humans between eating balanced, nutritionally complete meals and eating meals missing essential nutrients like essential fatty acids," explained Dr. Elynor Moore, lead author of the study, in an interview with The Independent. "Using precision fermentation, we are now able to provide bees with a tailor-made feed that is nutritionally complete at the molecular level."
The research team’s journey to this point was anything but easy. According to BBC and LBC, Professor Geraldine Wright, who led the project at Oxford, and her colleagues spent 15 years identifying exactly which nutrients bees need and how to incorporate them into a viable supplement. The breakthrough came with the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, which enabled the researchers to modify Y. lipolytica so it could produce all six essential sterols in a sustainable and affordable way. This yeast was chosen not only for its high lipid content and food safety record, but also because it’s already used industrially to produce other valuable compounds, making it an ideal candidate for large-scale production.
To test the supplement’s effectiveness, the team conducted three-month feeding trials in enclosed glass houses. Colonies of honeybees were fed either the sterol-enriched yeast or a traditional control diet. The results, as described in Nature and reported by KOHA.net, were striking: colonies given the new supplement reared up to 15 times more larvae to the viable pupal stage compared with those on the standard diet. Even more telling, colonies on the enriched diet continued to rear brood right up to the end of the trial, while those deprived of the supplement ceased brood production after 90 days.
But the benefits didn’t stop there. The sterol profile of larvae from colonies fed the engineered yeast matched that of naturally foraged colonies, indicating that the supplement was truly mimicking the nutritional benefits of a diverse, flower-rich environment. "Our study demonstrates how we can harness synthetic biology to solve real-world ecological challenges," said Professor Wright, as quoted in Science X. "Most of the pollen sterols used by bees are not available naturally in quantities that could be harvested on a commercial scale, making it otherwise impossible to create a nutritionally complete feed that is a substitute for pollen."
The implications of this discovery are enormous, both for honeybees and for the broader ecosystem. Honeybees contribute to the pollination of over 70% of leading global crops—including almonds, apples, and cherries—making them indispensable to agriculture and food security. Yet, as LBC and The Independent highlight, annual commercial honey bee colony losses in the U.S. have ranged from 40-50% over the past decade, with projections suggesting losses could reach as high as 60-70% in 2025. The situation is similarly dire in the UK, where bumblebee numbers fell to their lowest on record in 2024.
The new supplement could help address not only honeybee declines but also the plight of wild bee species. By providing domesticated bees with a nutritionally complete feed, the pressure on natural pollen resources could be alleviated, reducing competition between managed and wild pollinators. As Professor Phil Stevenson from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew observed, "Honey bees are critically important pollinators for the production of crops such as almonds, apples, and cherries and so are present in some crop locations in very large numbers, which can put pressure on limited wildflowers. Our engineered supplement could therefore benefit wild bee species by reducing competition for limited pollen supplies."
Danielle Downey, Executive Director of Project Apis m., a nonprofit dedicated to honeybee research, echoed this sentiment. "We rely on honey bees to pollinate one in three bites of our food, yet bees face many stressors. Good nutrition is one way to improve their resilience to these threats, and in landscapes with dwindling natural forage for bees, a more complete diet supplement could be a game-changer. This breakthrough discovery of key phytonutrients—that when included in feed supplements, allow sustained honey bee brood rearing—has immense potential to improve outcomes for colony survival, and in turn the beekeeping businesses we rely on for our food production."
Of course, the excitement is tempered by scientific caution. As The Independent and KOHA.net both note, the supplement’s long-term effects on colony health and pollination efficacy remain to be seen. Larger-scale field trials are now being planned to assess these impacts, but if all goes well, the supplement could be available to farmers and beekeepers within two years.
Looking ahead, the technology used to create this bee superfood could be adapted for other pollinators or even farmed insects, opening up new possibilities for sustainable agriculture. The yeast biomass itself contains not only sterols but also beneficial proteins and lipids, suggesting it could be developed into a comprehensive feed for a variety of species.
After years of setbacks and declining bee populations, the prospect of a scientifically engineered lifeline for honeybees is a rare and welcome piece of good news. As Professor Wright put it, "When the bees have a complete nutrition they should be healthier and less susceptible to disease." With global food security hanging in the balance, the world will be watching closely as this promising innovation moves from the lab to the field.
