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.

Based on these requirements, we decided to focus on three key aspects: specificity, regulation and biocontainment.

The first point, specificity focusses 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.

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.

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. ↩