A New COLOSS Task Force: Bee Nutrition

Abstract

Nutrition plays an important a role in the current context of worldwide honey bee health decline, biodiversity loss, and climate change (Neumann & Carreck, 2010; Steinhauer et al., 2018). It is both perceived as a key stressor as well as a crucial beekeeping management practice used to sustain bee health. As a major environmental driver of bee health (Brodschneider & Crailsheim, 2010; Steinhauer et al., 2018), nutrition can act alone or interactively with other stressors (Crone & Grozinger, 2021; Tosi et al., 2017). To improve bee health (i.e., manage honey bee population dynamics, sustain colony growth and overwintering) and protect bees from food shortages, beekeepers commonly feed honey bee colonies with artificial diets.