A Better Diet

A Better Diet

A Better Diet. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

Ramesh Sagili, a professor and honey bee Extension specialist in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences who's been doing research on honeybees lately in regards to honeybees diet.

SAGILI: Every year beekeepers lose at least along 30% if you look at an average for the last severn or eight years and our losses are relatively lower compared to the national numbers that have been recorded for the past few years but there is this concern because bee keepers are losing hives especially during winter time.

Researchers like Sagili have been looking into a number of possible suspects.

SAGILI: Honeybee nutrition is one. Be nutrition is an area that has not been very well studied and we still have gaps in knowledge in what's a better nutrition and how we can improve nutrition for bees so that we can decrease or reduce that one more stress on bees in terms of nutrition. So this nosema is a disease which is a gut parasite which basically starves the bees so the bees are not able to digest the protein that they eat.

Bees with a higher pollen diet seem to have a better survival.

SAGILI: If better nutrition can help somehow survive the nosema incidents and that's what we have been look at providing different concentrations or different quantities of pollen to these been in cages to see if that makes a difference in terms of survival or in terms of looking at the disease as well. Does it get worse or basically that's what we've been looking for.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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