Bees and other pollinators are critical to our survival, with one out of every three bites of food we eat depending on pollination to produce. That’s why reports of a decline in bee populations and rising threats from pests, viruses and environmental pressures, including climate change, are alarming. In this episode we talk with an expert on bees and other pollinators about how bees are doing and why it’s important to save them. We also talk with two biotech leaders whose companies are working to improve bee health through development of innovative treatments for some of the worst threats faced by bees.
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Bees and other pollinators are critical to our survival, with one out of every three bites of food we eat depending on pollination to produce. That’s why reports of a decline in bee populations and rising threats from pests, viruses and environmental pressures, including climate change, are alarming.
In this episode we talk with an expert on bees and other pollinators about how bees are doing and why it’s important to save them. We also talk with two biotech leaders whose companies are working to improve bee health through development of innovative treatments for some of the worst threats faced by bees.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Bees. They may bug you during the summer, but we desperately need these creatures. They are crucial to pollinating crops. How crucial? One out of every three bites of food you eat exists because of pollination.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The honeybee is the closest thing there is to a domesticated insect. We take care of them so that they can take care of us by helping many of our crops reproduce.
Rachel King (00:30):
[00:00:30] They're cute with their yellow and black stripes and fuzzy little bodies. They're hardworking. Thus, the phrase busy as a bee. And they're critical to our food supply. Yes, we're talking about bees. In this episode, we discuss the threats to these vital pollinators and the role biotech can play in saving them. I'm Rachel King, and you're listing to I AM BIO.
(00:55):
In [00:01:00] the mid 2000s, North America's beekeepers noticed that bees were in trouble. Beekeepers were losing between 30 and 90% of their hives. The phenomenon was named colony collapse disorder.
(01:30):
[00:01:30] The bee colony losses were a wake-up call. After all, without domesticated honeybees and other pollinators, we wouldn't have coffee beans for our morning cup, veggies in our salad, or even agave to make tequila for our margaritas. There have been several theories about the cause of colony collapse. The loss of forage plants and the overapplication of pesticides may be partly to blame. But pests like the invasive Varroa mite as well as diseases [00:02:00] such as American American foulbrood are also big threats to bees.
(02:04):
Thankfully, biotech innovators flew into action, developing technologies to solve the problem of dying bees. Today, we talk with two of them as well as an expert on pollinators to get the latest buzz on bee health. Our first guest leads a company that has developed a new RNA-based treatment for Varroa mite.
Andrey Zarur (02:28):
My name is Andrey Zarur. I [00:02:30] am the CEO of GreenLight Biosciences.
Rachel King (02:33):
Andrey describes in vivid terms what this parasite does to bees.
Andrey Zarur (02:37):
Imagine that you have... And this actually comes from one of our beekeepers. They say, "Imagine that you have a sewer rat roaming around your stomach." It is akin to having a rat. It is the same size comparison. The Varroa mite would be, if I were a honeybee, the Varroa mite would be the size of a rat. And that rat would [00:03:00] be attached to my thorax, eating out of my food supply. It's a true parasite.
(03:08):
Now, rats, you know, mate and have little rats and have 10 rats or whatever. Mites go and deposit eggs, hundreds of eggs inside the beehive. So they catch a ride on the adult bee, and so they come into the beehive and then they deposit their eggs on the baby bees. So if the effect is bad on [00:03:30] an adult bee, imagine now you having a baby bee and you have a parasite that's basically sucking away all the nutrients that that baby bee needs to thrive. And of course, it's also a vector for all kinds of diseases. Carries viruses, it carries fungi, carries a whole bunch of things that eventually result in the entire colony collapsing.
Rachel King (03:49):
I have to say that what Andrey describes sounds horrible. You can tell that Andrey is determined to solve this problem. But let's go back to where his passion for this issue began.
Andrey Zarur (03:59):
We started [00:04:00] GreenLight about 15 years ago because my middle boy, Alex, is extremely sensitive to a class of insecticides that, at the time, were very commonly used in the United States. They were applied to a number of fruits and vegetables and a number of other foods. I then decided to switch careers. I was a life sciences guy, but decided that there were plenty of smart people doing amazing things in trying to take care of human health, but certainly not enough was being done in trying to protect our food supply [00:04:30] using solutions that would not otherwise affect the health of our children, in this case, but more broadly the health of our food ecosystem, biodiversity, and of course pollinators. So we decided to start looking at alternatives to traditional chemical solutions, and that is where we stumbled upon the use of RNA as a solution for our food supply.
Rachel King (04:55):
Andrey explains why his company, GreenLight Biosciences, focused on a new treatment [00:05:00] for Varroa mite.
Andrey Zarur (05:01):
The importance of honeybees to our global food supply really cannot be overstated. If you think of the hundred top products that come from our fields, agricultural products, if you go to the supermarket and just walk through the produce aisle, you know, three quarters of the foods that you will see in your supermarket are actually pollinated by bees. Those crops account for 90% of the calorie intake that come from our fields. A collapse [00:05:30] on our honeybee ecosystem or population would necessarily result in a collapse of our global food system. 20 years ago, 30 years ago, maybe 10% of hives had Varroa mites. Today, virtually every beehive in the United States has Varroa mites.
Rachel King (05:50):
Andrey describes how beekeepers manage Varroa mite today.
Andrey Zarur (05:53):
The treatments that historically have been available are chemicals. Again, some pretty basic chemicals like oxalic [00:06:00] acid. Oxalic acid is toxic. You don't wanna be around oxalic acid.
(06:04):
In fact, if you meet a beekeeper... And we've met many of them. I was actually talking to one over the weekend. He's like, "We're doing the oxalic acid treatment in some of our beehives." I'm like, "Why are you doing oxalic acid in one of your beehives?" He's like, "Well, because we still have to test, and your product is not yet approved. So we need to do the oxalic acid." And the oxalic acid requires an astronaut suit because it's toxic not only to the Varroa [00:06:30] mite, it's toxic to the bee. It's toxic to the human.
Rachel King (06:33):
That's why it was so important to GreenLight to find an alternative.
Andrey Zarur (06:37):
If you've seen a beekeeper applying oxalic acid or some of the other products on the market, they're incredibly complex. You need to put 'em in a particular way. You need protective gear to supply some of them.
(06:54):
Ours is incredibly simple. It's a pouch. It shows up in a a little bag. It's about the [00:07:00] size of a 11x8.5 page. It has a sticker that you remove, and you put it on top of your beehive, not on top of the cells of the beehive, and then you put the top on top of the beehive and you're done. And you replace it every six to eight weeks. That's it.
(07:15):
It is mixed with food, basically, so water and sugar. That's it. The pouch has little holes that the bee drinks out of. It brings the sugar solution back into the hive, where it comes in contact with the mites. And the mites basically [00:07:30] are affected.
Rachel King (07:31):
Biotechnology is at the core of new solutions to protect these important pollinators.
Andrey Zarur (07:36):
We call RNA the superpower of nature. Nature's superpower is RNA. RNA is the oldest biomolecule in our planet. It is, by all means, the origin of life in our planet. And it is an incredibly powerful tool.
(07:54):
So what GreenLight did is we basically took the same principles of making RNA work for [00:08:00] us, work as a tool that we can use, but we put it on steroids. We needed something that would be rapid, that would be scalable, that would be inexpensive. Importantly, though, without sacrificing its safety or its efficacy. Those are sacrosanct. They have to be just as safe, they have to be just as effective, but they have to be 10,000 times cheaper.
(08:26):
This particular technology attacks the mite. In fact, it attacks [00:08:30] the mite's ability to thrive. And that is why it's so effective at preventing colony collapse disorders, because it's capable of targeting the adults, but also the baby mites. So something that is made to attack the Varroa mite also has an impact on the honeybee, also has an impact on a whole bunch of other insects that we don't want affected. The beauty of the RNA solution is we can design it to target specifically the genome of the Varroa mite and minimize any kind of collateral damage.
Rachel King (09:00):
[00:09:00] Andrey tells us where his company is in the process of bringing its Varroa mite treatment to market.
Andrey Zarur (09:05):
Well, unfortunately the product is not commercial yet. The product was delivered to the EPA, meaning the full dossier was filed to the EPA for approval in February of this year. We are working closely with the EPA and trying to get this product approved as quickly as possible.
(09:21):
It is being tested by a number of beekeepers across the country. The, the results that those beekeepers have seen are nothing short of spectacular. [00:09:30] So we've seen 40 to 50% reduction in mite populations across the beehives that are treated with the GreenLight product. Obviously, there is the regulatory review that the EPA has to do, which, you know, is welcome because this is a new class of products, and GreenLight wants to make sure that the public knows that this is perfectly safe, that it has been tested under the most rigorous of conditions and that we have [00:10:00] demonstrated that it does not affect the health of the bees, does not affect the food that the bees pollinate in any way, and of course most importantly, does not affect the health of the beekeepers or any other humans who happen to be around those beehives or those bees.
Rachel King (10:15):
Now, I'd like to introduce our second guest.
Kelly Bills (10:18):
I am Kelly Bills, the executive director of Pollinator Partnership.
Rachel King (10:23):
Kelly explains why we need to protect bees and other pollinators.
Kelly Bills (10:27):
Pollinator Partnership is a [00:10:30] nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of all pollinator species. We work all across North America to protect pollinators such as bees, birds, butterflies, bats, and we do that through, uh, habitat creation, education, and research.
(10:49):
Pollinators such as bees, but there are many other species out there, contribute a ton to our planetary health and to our daily lives. So [00:11:00] they not only provide ecosystem services such a pollination, where they are helping plants reproduce, they also provide a lot of other services such as things like their habitat-providing erosion control, water filtration, carbon sequestration, basically all these things that are helping keep our environment healthy and helping to fight climate change.
(11:30):
[00:11:30] So we really need them, but they also need us. They contribute significantly to our modern-day economy. Honeybees contribute $15 billion annually to the US economy alone, and the other pollinators out there contribute approximately 25 billion to the US economy. And then worldwide, pollinators in general contribute over $200 billion to the worldwide economy. They provide [00:12:00] one out of three bites of food that we as humans eat in a Western diet, so they're just so important to keeping us healthy.
Rachel King (12:09):
Kelly says bee health is a signal of what's happening in the broader ecosystem.
Kelly Bills (12:13):
Bees and other pollinators are definitely a canary in the coal mine, as you might say. We call them an indicator species. They're kind of the first species to give us a sign that something's going wrong.
(12:27):
With climate change and pollinators, what we're seeing are populations [00:12:30] declining, but we're also seeing population range shifts. We're also seeing mismatch of when the flowers are blooming. With the flowers that the pollinators need, when they're blooming, their timing is mismatched because of climate change, because seasonal weather influences are happening at a different time. And so pollinators basically aren't getting what they need when they need it. So this is a really big issue.
Rachel King (12:54):
Bees are bombarded by a multitude of environmental threats, as Kelly explains.
Kelly Bills (12:59):
I mentioned [00:13:00] some pests like Varroa mite. There's also a lot of diseases that can be present in especially social pollinator colonies like honeybees. So there's things like deformed wing virus, which is exactly how it sounds. It make their wings get deformed. They don't form properly and therefore, they can't fly and forage. And typically, they die. So there's quite a few diseases out there, and I think the increase in climate change stresses and poor nutrition helps to [00:13:30] unfortunately increase the presence of those diseases.
(13:33):
There's also pesticides are a big issue as well. So we know our modern-day agriculture does rely heavily on pesticides. The misuse of pesticides is something we really need to pay attention to.
(13:45):
And I think habitat loss is probably the biggest one that I like to really bring to people's attention when I think about pollinators as a whole, and honeybees certainly. Without good nutrition and without good diversity of [00:14:00] flowers out there in the landscape, bees, their health is going to decline.
Rachel King (14:11):
When we come back from a break, we'll hear from another company that's working to improve the health of honeybees.
(14:16):
For [00:14:30] the first time since 2019, we're hosting the BIO Investor Forum in person. Join us at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square from October 17th to the 18th. You'll experience two days of thought leadership, bio one-on-one partnering, and insight into investment trends for early-stage biotech companies. Visit bio.org/events.
(15:00):
[00:15:00] Long before humans were dealing with COVID, bees were facing a deadly pandemic of their own, a bacterial infection called American foulbrood. Our next guest runs a company that has created the first USDA-approved vaccine for honeybees. [00:15:30] This technology could pave the way for additional antivirals for insects.
Annette Kleiser (15:34):
My name is Annette Kleiser, and I am the CEO of Dalan Animal Health.
Rachel King (15:39):
Annette describes American foulbrood, a bacterial disease that destroys the developing young bees. It's believed that about half of the world's beehives are infected.
Annette Kleiser (15:50):
American foulbrood, it's bacterial disease and it destroys the brood. Despite its name, it's c-, it can be found [00:16:00] anywhere: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Europe, India. These are global pandemics because bees are traded globally.
(16:10):
American foulbrood is one of the most costly and detrimental diseases to beekeepers around the world. Not only does the beekeeper have to destroy the colony and the hive and all the equipment that came in touch with an infected hive, [some hives that were in a radius [00:16:30] of several miles around the diseased hive, even if they not symptomatic, have to be quarantined, have to be taken out of production. So that means that also your neighbor is affected by this. Your fellow beekeeper two miles down the street can be affected by this. And so it's, it's a really, really nasty disease that can spread rapidly and can bring a beekeeping operation to its knees.
(17:00):
[00:17:00] In the United States and some other countries, for many years beekeepers used antibiotics on their hives to prophylactically, to destroy the bacteria and lower the risk of a clinical manifestation. And antibiotics is, of course, not a good solution. You have the problems with antibiotic resistance that is popping up. It ends up... Residue ends up in the honey, so we will then [00:17:30] end up with the antibiotic. So it has effect not just on the bees, but also on the consumer.
(17:36):
So we need to have alternative solutions for disease prevention in these animals and globally, not just here in the United States. And that's where we came in. That's when we said, "Okay, we have to do something." We know immunization, [00:18:00] vaccination works. It's one of the most effective ways for disease prevention. So we developed the first ever vaccine for honeybees to protect them from American foulbrood.
Rachel King (18:12):
Developing a vaccine for insects was not just new, it was revolutionary. For a long time, scientists believed that insects didn't have an immune system. And therefore, a vaccine wouldn't work.
Annette Kleiser (18:24):
Uh, I often get the questions, why hasn't anybody done this before if it is such [00:18:30] a big problem? Well, because the science hadn't yet come to that level and that understanding that it's actually... honeybees and other insects do have an immune system. They have a very simple immune system. They don't have an antibody-based immune system like we do that gives you a memory system for 30 years. But honeybees don't live that long, so y- you don't need this very costly, elaborate system. You need a first line of defense to when an infection [00:19:00] or a pathogen comes that you have for a few days, you can build a defense.
(19:04):
And when researchers realized about 15 years ago that insects... And that's not just honeybees. That's, I don't know, moths and, and, and [inaudible 00:19:14] and grasshoppers. They all have this system. And furthermore, what they saw is that the maternal insect can pass the signal onto the next generation, and the offsprings are protected.
Rachel King (19:30):
[00:19:30] You may be humorously picturing a beekeeper trying to give tens of thousands of bees their tiny jabs. Of course, that's not possible. Annette explains how it really works.
Annette Kleiser (19:41):
The way the vaccine is administered is through the feed, a sugar paste that is called queen candy. It's, uh, powder sugar with corn syrup or with water. Our vaccine is added to this sugar paste. So there are no needles, (laughs) no ni-... no little syringes involved. So we just mix [00:20:00] it into the sugar paste.
(20:01):
And queens don't like to eat themselves. They have to be fed by nurse bees. So in the cage, there are maybe eight to 10 nurse bees. They take up the, the queen candy and they turn it into royal jelly. And this royal jelly now has the vaccine in it, because they took it up with their sugar paste, and they now feed it to the queen. And the queen takes up the royal jelly with the vaccine, digests it, and then [00:20:30] goes into an organ that's called fat body that is very important immune organ in insects. And from there, it is transferred to the ovaries.
(20:40):
And every little single developing larvae will see a piece of this vaccine and will also start mounting an immune response. So they will be protected before they hatch. That's when they are the most vulnerable, is in the first few days. So getting to the larvae and protecting the larvae before they emerge from the egg, [00:21:00] that's so important.
(21:02):
So this is just the first vaccine that we've developed to show that this is possible. We got the license approved, or the conditional license from the USDA. We received that in late December this past year in 2022. And in May, I believe it was this May, we started making the vaccine available to beekeepers in the US that can [00:21:30] now purchase the vaccine, immunize their queens, the new queens that go into the hive to establish the new colonies. So it is now in the hands of beekeepers in several states a- around the United States.
(21:45):
We are, of course, in the process of working with regulators in other countries. Our researchers are already working on other vaccines for other diseases that are threatening this particular industry.
Rachel King (21:59):
Recently, [00:22:00] there's been more awareness of the importance of wild bees and other pollinators. Annette says the benefit of her company's technology extends beyond just honeybees.
Annette Kleiser (22:09):
When you deal with wild animals, with wild pollinators, whether it's a bumblebee or whether it's a honeybee, they roam around, right? They fly out and they mingle with other bees. They mingle with wild pollinators. And when your managed honeybee colony is healthier, they are also less likely to infect [00:22:30] wild bees. So this vaccination is not just for the beekeeper. It's for all of us to make sure that we keep not just the honeybee in mind, but also the wild pollinators in mind when we develop these protective methods and tools for the industry.
Rachel King (22:49):
Annette says biotechnology is changing the game of pest management.
Annette Kleiser (22:53):
Biotechs played a central role in the development of this vaccine. All our [00:23:00] methods that we're using are biotechnological methods. And what is really important is that we want to develop sustainable, non-chemical solutions to save these critical animals.
Rachel King (23:15):
And here's Kelly Bills again from Pollinator Partnership with her take on the role of biotechnology in saving the bees, and maybe other species as well.
Kelly Bills (23:24):
I think biotech, technology, the science and researchers out there right now [00:23:30] are doing tremendous work 'cause I'm really hopeful about the potential for science, biotech, and other kind of research initiatives to solve some of these pollinator problems. And especially in relationship to the honeybee conservation, there's some really cool research happening and really cool innovations in terms of how to fight some of the pests and pathogens that are impacting bees. So, you know, there's even use of things like mushrooms and fungus and seeing how that [00:24:00] can help with the Varroa disruptor. There's a lot of really great things looking at the nutrition of the bees and how their kind of gut microbiome works. So there's so many really interesting, really technical things that are being looked at right now, and, and luckily the amount of awareness, the amount of money getting put into this field is really increasing. We're getting a lot more support from the government, from legislation for funding for these types of initiatives. So I'm seeing more and more researchers and on [00:24:30] the ground, you know, working to help pollinators. So this is really hopeful and really exciting.
Rachel King (24:36):
Kelly says everyone can help our pollinators thrive, including you, our listeners.
Kelly Bills (24:41):
Something everyone can do to help pollinators is to plant habitat. Anyone, really, even if you don't have a garden but maybe you just have a window box or some potted plants, maybe you just work in a community garden, putting habitat, pollinator-friendly plants in the ground is [00:25:00] a really easy and probably the most effective way to help pollinators. So we have a lot of resources on our website at pollinator.org to help you select which plants to plant. And that's gonna keep the pollinators healthy, give them food to survive throughout the season, and help their populations be strong.
Rachel King (25:23):
I wanna thank our guests, Andrey, Kelly and Annette, for helping us raise awareness of the essential job done by [00:25:30] bees and other pollinators, and how biotechnology just might save them. It's one of the many ways that modern biotech is making revolutionary gains to improve the health of people and our planet. And thank you all for listening. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and/or review this podcast and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at IAmBiotech, and subscribe to GoodDay BIO at bio.org/goodday.
(26:00):
[00:26:00] This episode was developed by executive producer Theresa Brady and producers Lynne Finnerty and Kourtney Gastinell. It was engineered and mixed by Jay Goodman, with theme music created by Luke Smith and Sam Brady.