This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Washington produces more blueberries than any other U.S. state, but farmers sometimes struggle to obtain honey bees to pollinate the plants and produce fruit. That's in part because beekeepers are reluctant to provide bees to blueberry farms, given that there have been increased—and mysterious—bee colony losses after blueberry pollination.
Researchers, however, may have found a solution: a feed that shows promise for boosting the size of bee colonies. "We don't know exactly why the losses happen, but fear has led some beekeepers to avoid blueberry pollination season entirely," said Lisa DeVetter, a professor of small fruit horticulture at Washington State University's Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center. "We want to help beekeepers maintain the health of their colonies while also helping blueberry growers produce the best crop." In a study published in the journal Entomological Communications, DeVetter and colleagues with a company called H4Bees found that feeding the pollinators a product called Nano-B-Feed resulted in increased honey bee colony size.
"The colonies that received the special feed had a statistically significant increase in the number of bees over the control group," DeVetter said. "Increased population is often a strong characteristic of colony health." Even though her specialty is small fruits, the importance of pollination in those crops has led DeVetter to study the beneficial insects so she can help growers. "The industry wants to improve pollination, so that has led me to do a lot of research on the topic," DeVetter said.
"Wild pollinators do contribute, but not enough in large commercial settings. Without renting honey bee colonies, berries are smaller and the yield and quality are reduced as well." The feed is a powdered supplement that is placed at a colony entrance for bees to consume. It's a combination of minerals and organic compounds mixed with powdered sugar.
Each ingredient is listed as generally recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "I've tested many other products to see if we can stimulate increased foraging or induce other colony growth indices," DeVetter said.
"This is one of the few times when I've seen a positive response. And since we don't have to open up the hives to provide the supplement, it's less invasive and easier to provide to the bees." Additional studies are needed to understand precisely how Nano-B-Feed works, but DeVetter and her H4Bees colleagues believe it may help bees detoxify pesticide and fungicide residues. Blueberry growers rely on fungicides to protect their crops from disease, DeVetter said, and bees can also pick up insecticides while foraging in nearby fields of other crops.
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