Mar. 11, 2008 Bees busily ferrying pollen from one cream-white
almond blossom to another in California orchards this winter
might get some of their zip from a new food called MegaBee: The
Tucson Diet. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologist
Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman created the research and development
agreement that led to this new, convenient source of proteins,
vitamins and minerals that bees need for good health. Bees can
eat MegaBee as a meal or snack when days are too cold for
venturing outside of their warm hive, for example, or when
flowers—bearing pollen and nectar, the staple foods for adult
bees—aren't yet in bloom. Better nutrition might be a key to
reversing the decline of honey bees, Apis mellifera, in the
United States. A mostly mysterious colony collapse disorder is
blamed for losses of once-thriving colonies, as are problems
caused by mites, beetles, Africanized honey bees, diseases and
pesticides. DeGrandi-Hoffman, at the ARS Carl Hayden Bee
Research Center in Tucson, Ariz., sought th