Turns out it’s not just humans who need to watch what they eat.

A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has revealed that a balanced diet is crucial for the health and task performance of honeybees, which play a key role in pollination around the world.

The research, conducted by Prof. Sharoni Shafir and his team at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, sheds light on how honeybees balance their nutritional intake to maintain homeostasis and enhance fitness.

The study’s findings indicate that an unbalanced diet with a high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio (5:1) significantly impairs the bees’ ability to nurse larvae. Bees fed such a diet showed delays in the onset of nursing behavior, reduced frequency of nursing visits, and altered attention to larvae of different ages.

In other words, if bee ladies don’t balance out their omega 6s with omega 3s, the baby bees get less attention, which ends up lowering hive health in the long run.

To investigate these effects, researchers fed one-day-old adult worker bees either a balanced or unbalanced diet for seven days. The bees were then released into a common-garden hive, tagged with barcodes and filmed continuously for six days.

Analysis revealed that bees on the unbalanced diet exhibited delayed and less efficient nursing behavior, particularly in distinguishing between three-day-old and four-day-old larvae.

Shafir emphasized the importance of the findings.

“Balanced nutrition is fundamental for honeybee colonies, impacting not just individual health but also the overall efficiency and survival of the hive,” he said.

“Our study underscores the importance of maintaining a balanced omega-6:3 ratio in the diet of honeybees to ensure they can perform their crucial roles within the colony effectively.”

Significant threat

The research has far-reaching implications, especially for cultivated landscapes where nutritionally balanced pollen sources may be scarce.

The trend toward a higher omega-6:omega-3 ratio in these areas could pose a significant threat to bee populations, affecting their health, cognitive abilities and colony sustainability.

The findings align with broader research across species, where nutritional imbalances are known to affect survival, reproductive success, and offspring health.

The study calls for increased awareness and measures to support the nutritional needs of honeybees.

“This study opens new avenues for further research linking fitness-related behaviors to nutritional balancing in honeybees,” Shafir added. “It also highlights the need for conservation efforts to ensure diverse and nutritionally adequate pollen sources are available for these essential pollinators.”