15 times more larvae compared to a colony eating only artificial pollen substitutes made from protein flour, sugars, and oils, which does not contain all the necessary nutrients.
As another poster has already pointed, this is not an improvement over traditional bee keeping, where the bees had access to enough flowers to obtain sufficient supplies of pollen for feeding their larvae.
This only solves the problem of creating artificial food for bee larvae, enabling to keep more bees than sustainable by the available flowers.
Presumably this enables the production of more honey in a given area, if there is enough flower nectar, as the flower pollen is no longer a limiting factor.
Adult bees need almost only energy, so they feed themselves with nectar, i.e. sugar, but they must feed their larvae with food rich in protein and fat, to enable growing, which is provided by flower pollen.
15 times more larvae compared to a colony eating only artificial pollen substitutes made from protein flour, sugars, and oils, which does not contain all the necessary nutrients.
Will this disrupt the honey production industry?
As another poster has already pointed, this is not an improvement over traditional bee keeping, where the bees had access to enough flowers to obtain sufficient supplies of pollen for feeding their larvae.
This only solves the problem of creating artificial food for bee larvae, enabling to keep more bees than sustainable by the available flowers.
Presumably this enables the production of more honey in a given area, if there is enough flower nectar, as the flower pollen is no longer a limiting factor.
Adult bees need almost only energy, so they feed themselves with nectar, i.e. sugar, but they must feed their larvae with food rich in protein and fat, to enable growing, which is provided by flower pollen.