Difference between revisions of "Team:Wageningen UR/Design"

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<h1>Helping honeybees and beekeepers with BeeT </h1>
 
<h1>Helping honeybees and beekeepers with BeeT </h1>
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<p>How would BeeT work? Who would use it and how would they use it? To explore these questions, we sought out experts, users and designers. They helped us integrate BeeT into society. On this page, we use BeeT's illustrated story to show you how it was changed by these inputs.</p>
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<p>How would BeeT work? Who would use it and how would they use it? To explore these questions, we sought out experts, users and designers. They helped us integrate BeeT into society. On this page, we use BeeT's illustrated story to show you how it was changed by these inputs. Our introductory comic summarizes BeeT's final design. This design was not something we thought of right away, but a fluid concept that changed with every interaction. In this page we show what considerations changed the design.</p>
 
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<figcaption>Our introductory comic summarizes BeeT's final design. This design was not something we thought of right away, but a fluid concept that changed with every interaction.</figcaption>
 
 
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<p>We started our project by talking to bee specialist Tjeerd Blacquiere from Wageningen UR and Frank Moens, spokesperson for the Dutch association for Beekeepers. They assured us that the parasitic mite Varroa destructor is indeed the main cause for the poor state of honeybees. With both we discussed current methods to treat the mites. They explained that, in the Netherlands, beehives are treated year-round with combinations of formic acid, oxalic acid and thymol. Each of these compounds has its own disadvantages: formic acid has a very small margin between concentrations that get rid of Varroa and concentrations that are harmful to bees. Oxalic acid treatment is only effective in the fall and winter. Lastly, thymol has a narrow temperature range and contaminates the honey with an unpleasant taste. Moreover, we have to conclude that the range of treatments available now is not effective enough. After all, current methods have failed to protect honeybees<sup><a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a></sup>. It is clear that our approach has to be more effective than current methods and should not contaminate the honey, an important product for beekeepers.</p>
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<p>Additionally we have spoken to Bob Mulders, an expert in strategic communication at Wageningen UR. He alerted us to the ‘don’t change the consumer, change the technology’ principle. This principle dictates that for a technology to be adopted, it should require little or no adaptation from the consumers. He also agreed to become official advisor of our team.</p>
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<figcaption>This is BeeT's triforce: it visualizes the three most important requirements. Firstly, we would need to have something that is better than current pesticides. Secondly, it needed to suit the beekeeper's schedule and methods, as beekeeping relies on highly conserved and reliable practices. Finally, it needed to overcome their resistance to GMO's; to do that, we believed it was vital for us to ensure it could not get into honey.</figcaption>
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<figcaption>This is BeeT's triforce: it visualizes the three most important requirements. Firstly, we would need to have something that is better than current pesticides. Secondly, it needed to suit the beekeeper's schedule and methods, as beekeeping relies on highly conserved and reliable practices. Finally, it is vital to ensure it could not contaminate the honey. These requirements take into account both the theoretical effectiveness of the approach as well as the more practical aspect that beekeepers need to actually want to use our product, BeeT. </figcaption>
 
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<h1><b>References</b></h1>
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<a id="fn1" href=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1153294>1.</a> Seitz, N., Traynor, K. S., Steinhauer, N., Rennich, K., Wilson, M. E., Ellis, J. D., ... & Delaplane, K. S. (2016). A national survey of managed honey bee 2014–2015 annual colony losses in the USA. Journal of Apicultural Research, 1-12. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a>
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Revision as of 08:29, 19 October 2016

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Wageningen UR iGEM 2016

 

 

 

Helping honeybees and beekeepers with BeeT

How would BeeT work? Who would use it and how would they use it? To explore these questions, we sought out experts, users and designers. They helped us integrate BeeT into society. On this page, we use BeeT's illustrated story to show you how it was changed by these inputs. Our introductory comic summarizes BeeT's final design. This design was not something we thought of right away, but a fluid concept that changed with every interaction. In this page we show what considerations changed the design.

We started our project by talking to bee specialist Tjeerd Blacquiere from Wageningen UR and Frank Moens, spokesperson for the Dutch association for Beekeepers. They assured us that the parasitic mite Varroa destructor is indeed the main cause for the poor state of honeybees. With both we discussed current methods to treat the mites. They explained that, in the Netherlands, beehives are treated year-round with combinations of formic acid, oxalic acid and thymol. Each of these compounds has its own disadvantages: formic acid has a very small margin between concentrations that get rid of Varroa and concentrations that are harmful to bees. Oxalic acid treatment is only effective in the fall and winter. Lastly, thymol has a narrow temperature range and contaminates the honey with an unpleasant taste. Moreover, we have to conclude that the range of treatments available now is not effective enough. After all, current methods have failed to protect honeybees1. It is clear that our approach has to be more effective than current methods and should not contaminate the honey, an important product for beekeepers.

Additionally we have spoken to Bob Mulders, an expert in strategic communication at Wageningen UR. He alerted us to the ‘don’t change the consumer, change the technology’ principle. This principle dictates that for a technology to be adopted, it should require little or no adaptation from the consumers. He also agreed to become official advisor of our team.

This is BeeT's triforce: it visualizes the three most important requirements. Firstly, we would need to have something that is better than current pesticides. Secondly, it needed to suit the beekeeper's schedule and methods, as beekeeping relies on highly conserved and reliable practices. Finally, it is vital to ensure it could not contaminate the honey. These requirements take into account both the theoretical effectiveness of the approach as well as the more practical aspect that beekeepers need to actually want to use our product, BeeT.
Based on these requirements, we decided to focus on three key aspects: specificity, regulation and biocontainment.
There are many chemicals that can be used to kill mites, but most are also harmful to honeybees to some extent. Therefore, our approaches aimed for a toxin that would truly be a better alternative.
Our regulation focused on two things: minimizing toxin presence in the beehive and ensuring that misapplication of BeeT would not result in damage to beehives or beekeepers. Initially, we intended for our toxin to be present in the beehive at all times. If it was not harmful to bees or humans, what would it matter? It could be used as a preventative measure. However, beekeepers voiced their dislike of GMO's and especially the presence of the toxin, so we soon realized we would have to minimize the beehive's exposure to BeeT. Therefore, we included two genetic circuits in BeeT for this purpose.
From the very start of our project, we were aware of the potential dangers of using synthetic biology in a system as volatile as a beehive. Additionally, we realized that beekeepers would never use BeeT if they were not convinced that BeeT, as a living machine, could not escape their control. With this in mind, we tried to implement two complementary biocontainment systems.
We explored the ethical and societal issues together with Synenergene, RIVM and students from the Design Academy Eindhoven.
BeeT design and product description by Thieu Custers, Design Academy Eindhoven. Thieu helped us put BeeT together in a way that is transparent to the user. To promote public debate on synthetic biology, it is essential that its usage is as visible as possible.

References

    1. Seitz, N., Traynor, K. S., Steinhauer, N., Rennich, K., Wilson, M. E., Ellis, J. D., ... & Delaplane, K. S. (2016). A national survey of managed honey bee 2014–2015 annual colony losses in the USA. Journal of Apicultural Research, 1-12. ↩