Commercial honeybee colonies, which pollinate more than 100 crops annually in the United States, are under attack by a tiny arachnid that resembles a tick: the parasitic varroa mite. GreenLight Biosciences’s NorroaTM, an RNA-based syrup that targets these destructive mites, is currently under review by the Environmental Protection Agency. Jason Miller, a beekeeper with hives across North Dakota and California, has participated in field trials of this solution. This is an edited excerpt from a conversation with GreenLight about his impressions so far.
Could you describe your history with the beekeeping industry?
Our family has been keeping bees for 130 years now, starting with my great-great-grandfather back in 1894; I'm a fifth-generation beekeeper. It's been a good run, and I’m hoping to keep the business going long enough that I can offer the same opportunity to my children—should they choose to pursue beekeeping.
Tell us about your experience with varroa.
The number one enemy for all beekeepers—hobbyists, commercial, everyone alike—is the varroa mite. It's what we spend the most time on: monitoring, treating, trying to keep under control, and dealing with the viruses they propagate. My dad always says there was a time when beekeeping was easy, then it became difficult, and that was pre-varroa and post-varroa. Grandpa said it was typical to have a 5% mortality; now we deal with a 30% to 40% mortality in our hives. Having another treatment path in our toolbox against varroa is very valuable.
Do you have suggestions to improve solutions being tested in the field?
Make the end product as user-friendly as possible. For example, minimize the amount of garbage that needs to be properly disposed of in the field. Account for translation issues: what types of conditions and temperatures does the solution need to be stored in, and is the information easy to find and understand? These types of things might be easy to control and communicate in a lab environment; make sure they are clear in the real world.
Name three improvements that will help boost beekeeping quality.
- Another effective varroa control.
- Better farming practices for more diverse forage for bees, so bees aren't consuming a mono-floral diet.
- Queen health and longevity.
In a good year, what are you doing to prevent a varroa infestation?
We're using multiple treatments (integrated pest management), instead of relying on one product. We're diversified across at least two to three different treatments throughout the year, [and] we sacrifice a lot of honey production for the treatment of varroa…upwards of 20 to 30% of our possible honey production potential is lost in order to apply treatments earlier due to mite levels.
Do you have an idea how varroa would damage your hives if you didn't have a long-lasting solution for mites?
If we didn't treat for mites, and let's say mites were resistant to everything that we know of, I suspect that we'd lose about 80% of our colonies year over year. Without having hygienic queens or hygienic stock, as it's called, we would probably be upwards of 80 to 90% loss. You can't rebuild once you get past a certain point. It's not sustainable, and that's what's really happened as varroa has become resistant to what were historical miticides and treatments. Beekeepers exited the industry because of devastating colony losses.
How does GreenLight’s solution compare to traditional chemical pesticides you've used?
It can be put anywhere in the hive with the same relative effectiveness because the bees are [taking up] the solution and carrying it back [into the frames], so the placement of it is not as critical. The temperature of it is not critical other than the fact the bees need to be warm enough for them to break the cluster and retrieve the [solution]. We're not mixing things together to produce the treatment—it comes so that dosing is very controlled and measurable versus a lot of other [pesticides] where you mix it into syrup and feed it. I think one of the great things about this [RNA pouch] is its dosing is very easy to control. What sets NorroaTM apart in addition to just how easy it is to use and the great results we've seen from it is the fact that isn’t just another formulation of an existing product.
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