Helping honeybees and beekeepers with BeeT

How would BeeT work in the real world? Who would use it and how would they use it? More importantly, would they even use BeeT? To explore these questions, we sought out experts, beekeepers and designers. They helped us prepare BeeT for real life and societal conditions. On this page, we use BeeT's illustrated story to show you how our design chanced in response to feedback, practical problems and new information.

Initial Considerations

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.

Specificity, Regulation and Biocontainment

Based on these requirements, we decided to focus on three key aspects: specificity, regulation and biocontainment.Below we discuss how those topic were incorporated in the final design.

Specificity

The first point, specificity focuses on how we can make an effective treatment to Varroa that leaves bees and humans unharmed. 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. During testing of the toxins, we encountered a major hurdle: Varroa are extremely vulnerable in laboratory settings and often die irrespectively of the treatment. To overcome this hurdle we developed a new in vitro assay for determining Varroa toxicity.

Regulation

Our regulation focused on two aspects: minimizing background 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.

Biocontainment

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. However, the RIVM (Dutch governmental institute for national well being and environment) challenged us to investigate the 'safety-by-design' in our project. Additionally, we realized that beekeepers would never use BeeT if they thought it could escape their control. With this in mind, we tried to implement two complementary biocontainment systems.

Prototype Design

To save bees, BeeT has to be used, even bought by beekeepers. To get beekeepers to use a technology, it should not just work well, but it also has to fit well with their concerns and practicalities. We asked design student Thieu Custers, from the Design Academy Eindhoven, to design a visual prototype. Below is his design and explanation: