Bees aren’t vegetarian. They’re omnivores. Their meat is microbes. Scientists spent 4 years proving that microbes are an essential part of a bees diet, and did an experiment where they took 84 male bee larvae and separated them into groups of 7. They sterilized half of the pollen and fed different mixes of sterilized and unsterilized pollen to the groups. As the percentage of sterilized pollen increased so did the larvae’s likelihood of dying. The larvae also weighed less and took longer to grow. Thus proving that microbes are an important source of nutrients for the bees.
Bees aren’t vegetarian. They’re omnivores. Their meat is microbes. Scientists spent 4 years proving that microbes are an essential part of a bees diet, and did an experiment where they took 84 male bee larvae and separated them into groups of 7. They sterilized half of the pollen and fed different mixes of sterilized and unsterilized pollen to the groups. As the percentage of sterilized pollen increased so did the larvae’s likelihood of dying. The larvae also weighed less and took longer to grow. Thus proving that microbes are an important source of nutrients for the bees.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surprise-bees-need-meat/