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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.

Beekeepers love their work. They love their bees and understand that Varroa is a problem they need to combat. They explained us what problems they were facing.
We would need to have something that is better than current pesticides. It needed to suit the beekeeper's schedule and methods, as beekeeping relies on highly conserved and reliable practices. Additionally, 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.
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.

"I am interested in combining disciplines to discuss ideas and come to new solutions. By using science and art together I aim to tell stories about what could be our future. I want to take existing conflicts or themes and envision what could be their consequences or solutions, to broaden our understanding of the present.

BeeT is a innovative approach to solving a man-made problem. Implementing a genetically engineered bacterium into the agricultural sector is something that should be done carefully. It opens up a dialogue about the use of altered organisms in daily life. Communicating both the risks and the merits of such a precise tool is the most important to me. Genetic engineering is a new technology that is met with a lot of fear, but by completely and openly showing the inner workings, it can be assessed honestly.

With BeeT specifically, the challenge is going to be to gain acceptance in the world of beekeeping. The design of the BeeT container is meant to be clear in use, and will show which hive is currently being treated with the bacteria. The marking label is still connected to the container of the bacteria, ensuring no mix up of labelling."



BeeT will, via the sugar water, end up in the brood food and transported to cells where bee larvae grow and where the mite is present. Inside the cell it will ‘sense’ and kill the mite. This will result in healthy winter worker bees who live longer than their summer counterparts, strongly increasing the chance of survival of the colony. The timing of Bee-T makes sure it will not interfere with the honey. In comparison, existing technologies use for example Thymol which is a pure toxin.Thymol is not only toxic for mites but for beekeepers and bees as well. It has to be applied three times a year and does interfere with honey and beewax: making it taste like mouthwash . Interestingly the ‘do not change the consumer principle’ turned out to be an important input point. Rather than requiring that beekeepers would have to change the sugar baskets that they use (since some of them are not completely dark) we decided to do light measurements and adapt the system in such a way that the system would not be killed by the light of the sugar basket. A box like product is the most ideal form since it can be applied to all sugar-water-basket systems.

BeeT design and product description by Thieu Custers, Design Academy Eindhoven.