How The Tech Behind A COVID19 Vaccine Is Helping Save Bees

Commercial beekeeper Leanna Teigen Moreno has been in the industry for more than a decade and thinks she knows what she's doing when it comes to honey production. A hipster pixie with a platinum brunette worker's cut and bright blue eyes, Teigen operates 800 hives in North Florida. Her experience at the Florida Bee Research Laboratory in Gainesville taught her everything she wanted to know about bee diseases. This knowledge came in handy when she destroyed her hive late last year, despite being a part-time beekeeper. "I didn't really think I was immune, but I was a little bit tickled," she said.

She is not alone. American beekeepers have lost nearly half of their colonies, according to the annual honey bee survey released June 22 by the nonprofit research group Bee Informed Partnership. From blueberries to strawberries to peaches, melons, and pumpkins, about one-third of the fruits and vegetables Americans eat.

For cattle, honey bees are as important to the US food supply as cows, chickens and pigs, but losses are mounting. The 48% annual loss covering the 2022-2023 winter season is up from 39% in 2021-2022. And by 2020-2021, the mortality rate will reach 50.8%. - The worst results since the study began in 2008. Climate change, pesticides, crop stress and the loss of wild plant biodiversity all play a role in the death of bee colonies, but the biggest threat comes from Varroa , a small invasive parasite. Instead of a pin head, but it causes great damage to the bees they eat. In the year Varroa mites have plagued beekeepers since they were introduced to the United States from Asian honey bees in the mid-1980s, but commercial treatments have become less effective in recent years as the mites' viral load has increased. "Varo mites are the biggest threat," Tiegen says. "This is something that beekeepers have been trying to get under control for years and frankly it seems to be a dead end. To reverse this trend, we need more tools in our tool belt."

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A new device is being developed: Boston-based biotech Greenlight Biosciences has developed an RNA anti-mite treatment for urticaria that uses the same technology as Pfizer's new Covid-19 vaccine. Only in this case, instead of creating a dummy protein designed to activate the human immune response, the RNA is used to suppress a protein essential to the Varroa's reproductive system. If DNA is the basis for the growth of all types of cells on Earth, RNA is the concrete mixer that creates the building blocks of specialized proteins. Each RNA formulation is specifically designed to hit a single target - unlike a broad-spectrum insecticide bomb that can cause damage to other beneficial insects with a precise hit.

This infant RNA-based technology is heralding a new revolution in disease prevention and control across the agricultural spectrum, from botrytis on blueberries and grapes to Colorado potato beetle, Colorado potato beetle and crop armyworm. Miles of spiders from North America to South Africa and even common houseplants. In 2009, Andrei Zarur, founder of Greenlight Biosciences, who was trying to find biological solutions to the overuse of chemicals like pesticides, said RNA manipulation could be a powerful new tool to fight some of the world's deadliest pests. Herbicides and fungicides in the world food system. "Thanks to Covid vaccines, RNA will revolutionize our food supply as it will in human health."

Unlike their pollinating relatives, honey bees are not at risk of extinction. When a beekeeper like Teigen loses half of her hives, she rebuilds them, dividing the rest and filling it with young queens that lay thousands of eggs for her new hives. However, this process requires a lot of time and effort, reducing honey production and pollination services. When beekeeper Barry Hart started his honey business in Fargo, Georgia in 1986, a 10 percent loss was considered a disaster. Today, he is happy when he can keep the level below 40% and the classification of the beehive is the main part of the annual burden of pollen and honey production. "The only thing that bothered me was the black bear," he drawls in South Georgia. "Now I can't even watch my readers tick."

Modern agriculture cannot succeed without modern beekeeping. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 71 of the 100 crops that provide 90% of the world's food supply depend on beekeeping. Take, for example, the $5 billion California almond industry. Beginning in February, 1.35 million hectares of almond trees bloom for six weeks each year. Trees like avocados, apples, and peaches must be pollinated by insects to produce nuts because their pollen is too heavy to be carried by the wind. But decades of industrial monoxide, combined with the use of pesticides to keep these crops healthy, have depleted native pollinators. Beekeepers from across the United States bring their nearly 1.2 million hives to the Central Valley, halfway to California.

Beekeepers earn about $200 per hive for their efforts, more than they can get from honey production, but that comes at a cost. A swarm of billions of bees in a small space is a playground for pathogens. "It's like a pool," says Hart, who still goes there every year. “Every beekeeper from the bottom of the ladder to the top is there. You never know who your bees are sitting next to, what viruses and mites they have.

Read more : Beekeepers are working harder than ever after nearly half of America's honey bee colonies died last year

After stops to plant oranges and other crops in North Dakota alfalfa and Florida, he brings his bees back to Georgia to collect honey and prepare for the winter. During this period, the number of purchased termites in California almond orchards increased dramatically. The varroa mite is not a mite, but it acts like a mite: jumping from one feed to another, the spinner sticks its tongue to the stem and feeds on the insecticidal blood called hemolymph. On a human scale, Teigen says, it's like having a tick the size of a sewer rat sucking up your gut.

For adult bees, adult varus is a nuisance and a virus vector. It's a population bomb in the brood cells in the wax-walled hive where nurse bees raise the next generation. When a pregnant mite enters a brood cell containing bee larvae, varro mites hatch on the body of an adult bee and breed. Worker bees fill the hive with brood food, protein-rich honey and pollen designed to feed the growing brood, and coat it with wax until the bees are ready to hatch. Meanwhile, the varroa female goes to work, depositing her seed in the cell and feeding the developing bee larvae. The young mites mate, and by the time the adult bee is ready to leave the hive, both a weakened and newly pregnant swarm of varroa mites is ready to "spread the good news," Teigen said. “No matter how beautiful and beautiful a bee colony is, the varroa mites come and turn it into a weapon. As beekeepers, we want to keep bees, but we also end up keeping ants.

Beekeeper and explorer Liana Teigen calms her bees with a smoker before heading out in search of their queen. His work is part of an ongoing experiment for Greenlight Biosciences using RNA technology to control common agricultural pests.

Pierre Isich

Many young bees appear to be flightless, have damaged wings, are virus carriers and are too weak to carry out their primary duty of caring for the next generation of young. A seemingly healthy hive can disintegrate within a few weeks. Beekeepers have access to a wide range of products, from volatile forms of formic and oxalic acid that must be used in protective equipment, to powerful insecticides and acaricides to sell honey because of their toxic effects, to combat mites in the beehive. . The problem is that both methods harm bees and are less effective against small insects. Although she used her usual treatment earlier, when she saw how destructive the mites were in her own hive, Tijn became overzealous and tried a different formula, killing as many bees as she saved. "Taking care of my bees is a necessary evil," she says. "But most of the time I feel like I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it's not too much or that the queen isn't accidentally killed in the process."

Hart, who uses his bees for food twice a year, is now increasing the frequency, disrupting his busy pollination schedule and further reducing honey production. "We've reached a point where we have to do something else if we want to stay in business because it's getting harder and harder to kill ticks," he says.

Hart had never seen anything like it, at least not until Greenlight insisted on trying his new bullet treatment on some of his colonies. Instead of spraying or steaming, the as-yet-unbranded version of Greenlight, which is under regulation with the EPA, looks like a smooth white mailbox full of syrup. One side is perforated, and upon entering the hive, the RNA-rich sugar solution flows into the combs, which the nurse bees then take to feed the young, killing any intruders. It hides in the cells of the hive. Procedure. The RNA is designed to suppress a protein needed for Varroa growth, so it doesn't work in bees.

When varroa use the beauty of beekeeping for their own reproductive purposes, Greenlight RNA Solution turns that tool into a weapon by stopping the reproductive cycle. "If you can provide compelling evidence that it works, that it has no side effects, and that it's practically effective at a low cost to the beekeeper, that's what beekeepers want," says Natalie Steinhauer, scientific coordinator of the collaboration. For Bee Awareness, which conducts an annual survey of bee colony losses. "If anything, it's good to have a new [option] so that we don't have to rely too much on the few existing treatments that are already resistant to Varroa mites."

Eli Powell, a microbiologist at the Nancy A. Moran Research and Laboratory Group at the University of Texas at Austin who focuses on insect and bacterial genomics, called Greenlight's decision "positive." We need new ideas to solve the many problems bees face. In Moran's lab, he and his colleagues developed an RNA solution that targets another bee pathogen, Nosema . His group uses the same basic RNA technology to genetically engineer bee gut bacteria to produce anti- Nosema RNA in the bee's digestive system. "I see nothing but progress using these approaches," he says.

When Hart first tried the Greenlight treatment two years ago, he was skeptical. How does something that isn't even designed to kill ticks work? But the birth control effect soon became clear. Within weeks, he was able to lift the lid and see which hives would receive the treatment and which would receive the placebo. "Because by the end of the process, most of them are dead. The rest are filled with happy, healthy bees."

Teigen is currently testing Greenlight's miticides in the cell nuclei -- the mini colonies used to reproduce the queen -- to make sure they have no side effects. The queen meets several drones on her first flight, collecting sperm before returning to her hive to lay her lifelong eggs. If he is well mated, he will have enough sperm for many years. But if she withers or never marries, her hive will protest. It is important to ensure that greenlight treatment does not affect flight or the ability to lay eggs later. After last year's unfortunate experience of treating her bees with a conventional chemical acaricide, Tijn couldn't wait to see a product on the market that would do the job without harming her beloved bees. "Adding insecticide to a bug box to kill a bug is not," she says. "Having something for less would change my life and the lives of the bees." They also do not collect the honey obtained during processing.)

Greenlight is in the final stages of obtaining regulatory approval for its first RNAi solution for the Colorado potato beetle, but there is still a long way to go to treat the Varroa mite. The company submitted its decision to the EPA in February for regulatory review, a process that could take up to two years. However, the beauty of RNA-based therapies is their versatility. Now that the company understands the varroa system down to the level of individual proteins, it won't take long to adapt the formula to other varroa proteins. Or even other ticks. What can be useful? Another invasive mite, Tropylaps , is affecting hives in Asia and Europe and has recently been found in the United States. It grows even faster. At least until he finds a piece of RNA that bears his name.

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Email Andrew D. Johnson at andrew.johnson@time.com.

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