Norroa: A New Era in Varroa Management (357)

357 - Fall Honey Sales

Deni Duncan: Hello. This is Deni Duncan from Double D Bees in Northern California. Welcome to BeekeepingToday Podcast.

[music]

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey. A quick shout-out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either.

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Hey. Thank you, Deni, for that great opening from Northern California. I love her voice. That was wonderful.

Becky: I know. It sounded very sunny and warm compared to what's going on here in Minnesota.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, thank you, Deni. Becky, I'm finally settled, as we talked about last week, and slowly getting settled in a little bit better. Hopefully, have a good year tucking in the bees and getting them ready for winter.

Becky: Right. Those of us who live in climates where your options are more and more limited as the days progress towards the end of the year, hopefully our checklists are taken care of and we can maybe catch our breaths and start planning next year. [laughter] Sorry.

Jeff: That is the fun thing about beekeeping. It becomes very intense, very focused through the spring and summer, and then it falls back. Then you take a couple months off and regenerate, recoup, replan, figure out what worked, what didn't work, by golly, and what you're going to do right this time. [chuckles] Maybe that's just what I'm going to do, but I imagine it goes through many beekeepers' minds.

Becky: Right. You start making those lists and reflecting on your year. I'm almost there, but I don't have time quite yet to do that.

Jeff: At the Washington State Beekeepers Association, there was an auction for queens from a Northern California queen breeder. I got five queens for $150, which was like, "That's good." That includes shipping.

Becky: Excellent.

Jeff: I think that's a good price. I'm ready to do my splits next spring already.

Becky: Already, you're ready for splits?

Jeff: Right. Come on spring. Come on spring, I want to do my splits. I have some great queens I want to use.

Becky: Oh my gosh. Very exciting. Very exciting.

Jeff: It is. Becky, today we have a great question from a listener about reversing hive bodies.

Becky: Does that mean this listener is going to get a HiveIQ hive tool? Does it depend upon how we answer the question?

[laughter]

Jeff: Yes. Carolyn is going to get a HiveIQ tool. As we've been promoting all month, HiveIQ has provided specially branded HiveIQ tools that has, on one side, of course, the HiveIQ brand and logo, and on the other side, it says Beekeeping Today Podcast logo. It's a really nice, wonderful, very strong tool. I used it all year long. Carolyn will get a brand-new tool, not the one I used, and more of this question. Let's get to her question right away. We'll be right back after we hear from Carolyn.

Becky: Sounds good.

Carolyn O'Neill: Hello. My name is Carolyn O'Neill, and I'm calling from Central Virginia. I'm a hobby beekeeper with five hives. I was wondering how you felt about reversing hive boxes at the end of the season in preparation for winter, and when to reverse them back. It's still pretty warm here in Central Virginia. Here, it is October, and it's about 70 degrees here, so we've still got some warm days. Also, if you could talk about the benefit of reversing the hive boxes. Thank you.

Becky: I love the fact that Carolyn included what the temperatures were where she is in Virginia because it really does make a difference. I'm suspecting that wherever you are, it might not be a great time to reverse, although her temperatures are definitely in the right-- Okay, I can't think of this word. [laughs]

Jeff: Right range?

Becky: Thank you. Right range. The range is the word I wanted. I like a spring reversal but I will do a fall reversal, but my fall reversal is in August. If it's a two-deep colony, because I know they're going to get some nectar, the top deep is always going to be heavier than the bottom deep. I will do a reversal so that they can store as much of that incoming nectar as possible.

Depending upon where she is and depending upon what nectar is coming in, it might make sense to do that reversal, but otherwise, I would really be hesitant to break up that brood nest. I'd be really hesitant to disrupt them because we really are getting on in the season. I think a lot of the fall management, no matter where you are, really does take place in August or maybe early September.

I think that reversal, in my mind, only makes sense to me if the temperatures are warm enough, so the 70s are great, but then also that there's nectar coming in, and the bees have just plenty of time to really make sure they can put their house together again.

Jeff: I typically do my reverses in the springtime because by that time, the bees have pretty much gone through all their honey in the box above if you're doing a two-brood box hive. You just reverse them, so you put the empty space above. Helps mitigate any swarming tendencies because they have a lot of space above them. Her second part of the question, of course, was when do you reverse them back? Having not done any reversals in the fall, I would think that by that time, they'd blown through pretty much all their food in the springtime.

Becky: The spring reversals, it's like that one rule that you have to know is never break up the bird nest because the spring temperatures will drop overnight. I think that's just a good rule to follow, regardless where you are, because if you break up that brood nest, your cluster might not be big enough for the bees to cover the brood, and you might have chilled brood. You might see signs of dying brood because of that.

Jeff: Well, Carolyn, I hope that helps answer your question. If they have plenty of honey above them, I wouldn't reverse them right now. As Becky was saying, you want to be careful breaking that brood nest. Consider the colony before you split it.

Becky: Excellent.

Jeff: Becky, we have a great guest today. Actually, we had him on at NAHBE this last year, didn't we?

Becky: We did. Seems like we've been waiting to have this guest on forever because we were waiting for the approval of Norroa, and so here we are.

Jeff: We've had a series of shorts we did with Dr. David Peck on varroa treatments. We're looking forward to doing a short about Norroa shortly. When it comes to varroa control, beekeepers have relied on a familiar lineup of tools, some effective, some less so, as resistance builds. This year, a brand new approach has emerged with the recent EPA approval of Norroa, the first dsRNA-based treatment specifically designed to interfere with varroa mite reproduction.

After the break, we'll be joined by Adam Pachl of GreenLight Biosciences to take us beyond the headlines. We'll talk about how this new RNAi technology works, what it means for beekeepers, and how Norroa could change the way we manage mites moving forward. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Jeff: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sitting around this great big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table, sitting in Mandel, North Dakota, is Adam Pachl.

Becky: He might be in Mandan, North Dakota, Jeff.

Jeff: Mandan. What did I say?

Adam: Mandan.

Becky: I know you're not from Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, but I just want to make sure that-

Jeff: Mandan.

Becky: -you get the city right. Mandan.

Adam: Mandan.

Jeff: Sitting in Mandan-

Becky: Mandan.

Jeff: -is Adam. [laughs] Sitting in St. Paul-- is that right? St. Paul?

Becky: You did really well with St. Paul.

Jeff: St. Paul, Minnesota, and I'm sitting here in Olympia. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam: Thank you for having me.

Jeff: We've been looking forward to having you on the show and about this topic since we talked to you in January at the North American Honey Bee Expo.

Adam: Been waiting a long time, been looking forward to it, so like I said, thanks for having me. It's exciting.

Becky: Adam, now that the approval has come through, and I just got an email saying, "You're in Minnesota, you can buy Norroa," are you sleeping at night or are you working just 24/7?

Adam: Probably get a couple hours. I fall asleep in my cereal at breakfast, and wake myself out of my lunch plate and catch little naps here and there.

Jeff: I can't imagine how busy you are because people have been looking forward to this. We're going on like everybody knows what we're talking about. Tell us about your background, who you are, how you got started, and then we'll jump into the Norroa pool.

Adam: My name is Adam Pachl. I am the North American Technical Manager for Bee Health at GreenLight Biosciences, who is the maker of Norroa. My background, I'm a beekeeper, a backyard beekeeper myself. Before I got into bees, I had a job that I wasn't satisfied with. I have a conservation background, bounced around different jobs out of college that were always conservation-related. Had a job I wasn't really satisfied with.

The North Dakota Department of Agriculture was hiring for a technician that was in line with what I had done and my training, so took a flyer, didn't really know much about the job. Got hired, and it turns out that most of the job was doing apiary inspections. Pretty much started that on day one and absolutely fell in love with it. I loved the work, I loved dealing with bees, I loved dealing with beekeepers. It was just a natural fit.

Fast forward six months, there was some reshuffling. I got moved up to what we called the assistant state apiary inspector, helping out the state inspector. The way we did things, I did the field work, so I got to have all the fun. Our state inspector got stuck in the office doing more of the administrative, taking phone calls, things like that.

I did that for six years, growing with beekeeping, growing with the industry, learning everything I could. Learned about Norroa, learned about GreenLight Biosciences, what they were doing, got really excited. Saw what I thought it could do for the beekeeping industry and how it could help nationwide, and had the opportunity to come on and really couldn't say no to that. That was a year ago in August, and here we are now.

Becky: Let's get back to apiary inspector in North Dakota. Can you just share with the listeners in case they don't know what a big deal that is? [laughs]

Adam: Yes. At our state meeting this year, I saw the numbers. North Dakota requires licensing. There were something like 825,000 licensed colonies, give or take a couple thousand. See, I kept farmers' hours from May until pretty much the end of October. I'd leave the house Monday morning, tell my wife and my kid, "See you at the end of the week," drive somewhere in the state, live out of a hotel, and start working at sun-up inspecting bees for whoever needed inspections. Do that usually through Thursday or Friday.

When I was on the road, I'd work until sundown and then, like I said, come home Thursday or Friday, put all the samples that I gathered in the freezer, process them. Usually try and keep one day a week at the computer just to catch up on phone calls, emails, everything else I had to do. That was pretty much all summer until the bees left North Dakota to go to other states. It's a different experience than a lot of other places in the country.

Becky: It's an amazing experience because when your eyes are on that many colonies, you learn very quickly.

Adam: Yes. I didn't keep bees myself when I was an inspector because I told people I had 800,000 colonies [laughter] that I was in charge of. When I got home on the weekends, I needed a little bit of a break. Now I have a couple of my own that I keep with my eight-year-old son, teaching him to start keeping bees. He loves it. We go out together and take care of the bees, and it's a good time.

Jeff: We've been talking all around this. What is Norroa, and why is this so exciting?

Adam: Norroa got EPA-registered on September 25th. It's exciting. It's kind of the opposite of what we've done with mite treatments in the beekeeping community. Everything we have and that we've had available to us is a knockdown. We let our mite populations grow in the hive, those mites are doing damage to our bees. They're spreading disease throughout the hive. They're weakening our colonies. Then when they get to an unacceptable level, we're killing them and knocking those populations down.

Norroa isn't a knockdown. It doesn't kill mites itself, but it stops their reproduction. Instead of letting the population build up, you apply it when your mite levels are low and it maintains that low population. It stops mites from laying eggs. It's the first chance that beekeepers really have to get in front of mites in their colonies and prevent them from really becoming a problem.

We've done a lot of field trials, a lot of lab studies. There's a lot of work that went into it. Our data shows that it can keep mites under control for up to four and a half months. It can last an entire calendar season, keeping mites under control, which can really make a huge impact on colony health, winter survival, a lot of different things that can have a huge impact on the industry.

Jeff: Wow. Four and a half months. That's amazing. What is it about Norroa that makes it different from all the other varroa control options available?

Adam: Everything else that we've used is something that we figured out along the way works against mites, but it already existed. They were either essential oils, some sort of acid, things like that that were already available and being used for other things, and then someone just figured out that it also works against mites and was relatively safe for honey bees. Norroa was developed specifically for varroa mites. It's targeted at varroa mites.

What it is, it's double-stranded RNA. It utilizes RNA interference. Because of that, it has no impact on honey bees. It has no impact on humans. It's totally safe for anything else that might come in contact with it. That's how we're able to stop egg production, how we're able to stop varroa mites from laying eggs. It's just a very unique, earth-shattering way-- Earth-shattering sounds really a bombastic way to say it, but the technology that it's built on won the Nobel Prize in the late 2000s. It's built on Nobel Prize-winning technology.

Jeff: When you start talking about DNA and RNA and RNAi, that topic concerns a lot of people. What's being done, or how do we know this is not going to affect any non-targeted subjects or other arthropods?

Adam: The reason a lot of people get concerned is things that they heard, things that they might have learned with the vaccines that came out during the pandemic, that was all using mRNA, or messenger RNA. That was a new RNA that was being introduced into bodies, often based off of deactivated viruses. There was a lot of concerns with that because that's introducing new messages into the body.

RNAi (RNA interference) is different in that it interacts with the messenger RNA that's already in our bodies that belongs there. To do that, we got to do a little bit of a deep dive into the science. There's a hierarchy of information in our bodies. It starts with DNA. Everyone has DNA; every living organism has DNA. It's the code — you can almost think of it as a book — that tells our bodies, tells every organism what to do. RNA is the structures. It's how our bodies and every organism reads that book to understand what to do. Once that RNA reads those messages, it takes those messages and uses that information to build different proteins. Those proteins are how our bodies function.

Messenger RNA does just that; it's in the name. It carries those messages. There's messenger RNA that belongs in our bodies, and that's doing specific jobs. With the vaccines that everyone learned about during the pandemic, there was a new messenger RNA being introduced. This isn't messenger RNA. What RNAi does, and what we're introducing, is a strand of RNA that binds to messenger RNA that is already in the varroa mites. What it does is it blocks that messenger RNA that is already existing in the varroa mites. It binds to that and stops it from sending the message.

Without that message, there's a specific protein that doesn't get produced anymore in the varroa mites, and without that protein, their reproduction is stopped. They can't produce viable eggs anymore.

Becky: Adam, does it do anything to the actual normal lifespan of varroa?

Adam: That is research that we're trying to do. There's a couple universities trying to look at that. The hard part is to quote-- I don't want to attach a name to it because I haven't asked for his permission. To quote a researcher that does a lot of varroa mite research, when you're trying to keep a mite alive, all they want to do is die. [laughter] To track a varroa mite long enough to see if it does anything longer term to shorten their lifespan has been hard to do that so far. There's a few people that think that it does shorten their lifespan. It may not have an immediate impact, but we can't say that definitively because we haven't been able to determine that yet.

Becky: I realized when I asked you that question that I have no idea what the lifespan of a varroa mite is. Do we know that?

Adam: It depends on the season. Again, doing a little bit of a deep dive into biology, egg laying causes a fitness trade-off because it takes a lot of energy. In the summer, when the colony has a lot of brood and varroa mites are reproducing, their lifespan is shorter because they're devoting a lot of energy into laying eggs. Just going off memory, so I'm probably going to say the wrong thing and make myself sound really foolish, but I believe their lifespan is two months. Someone's probably going to correct me and make me look like an idiot. In the winter, when they're in a colony that's clustered up, there's no brood, they can live longer because they're not laying eggs, and they're not spending their energy on that.

I don't think I totally answered Jeff's question in how can we ensure that it's safe for other organisms. To backtrack with that, taking all of that information into account with the messenger RNA, the RNAi, it binds to a specific piece of messenger RNA in the varroa mites that has a specific sequence of letters. That sequence is unique to varroa mites. It doesn't exist in any other organism. If you think back to biology, there are certain letters that match up. There's G, A, T, and U. Only certain letters can match with other ones. That sequence of letters doesn't exist in honey bees. It doesn't exist in humans. It doesn't exist in wax moths.

There's a published paper using wax moths to test if it has any impact on them, using them as a surrogate to see if it's safe because they are likely to be in a hive environment, coming in contact with Norroa if it's present, and it has no impact on them. There's been a lot of research with arthropods and insects that we know the genetic code for it, just seeing if there's any overlap, and it just doesn't exist because it's so specific to this specific gene in varroa mites.

Jeff: We've learned that this new product, Norroa, is based on RNAi to block the messaging of the varroa so it cannot lay eggs, or the eggs aren't viable. Is it that they don't lay eggs or the eggs aren't viable?

Adam: Generally, they don't lay eggs. During some uncapping studies, every once in a while, you might see one egg that got laid, but then it wouldn't hatch. That might be because there was a delayed exposure by the varroa mite to the active ingredient, but in the rare instance that they were able to lay eggs, that egg didn't hatch.

Jeff: It's an RNA-based or RNAi-based product that stops the varroa from laying eggs. It's not a knockdown like, say, Formic Pro or something like that. It just prevents the mite from laying eggs. After maybe several weeks, the varroa just dies with no reproduction. You might still have mites coming in from a foreign drone or something like that, so it's an ongoing treatment. This does sound so much better, and not stressful on the bees like all of our other treatments.

Adam: Yes, you nailed it. There's no impact on the bees. There's no stress as far as the colony is concerned because it's delivered through being incorporated in a sugar syrup. As far as the colony is concerned, it's sugar syrup. They're just going about their business, their everyday life, like nothing's happening, but for the varroa mites, they can't reproduce anymore.

Jeff: This is fantastic. We'll be back to Adam and our discussion about Norroa and GreenLight technologies right after these words from our sponsors.

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Becky: Before we get into delivery, I just want to back up really quickly. Basically, your treated colony has workers that have the RNAi in their system, so any varroa in the colony or coming into the colony will be exposed to it for approximately four and a half months. Is that right?

Adam: The mites don't come in contact with it through the bees. They actually come in contact through the brood food. We have a few studies that have been done that should be published soon. We're waiting to see who the first one that'll be able to publish it will be. The active ingredient is called vadescana. That's incorporated in a sugar syrup that are in the pouches that you apply to the hive, which is a super easy process. When they take that sugar syrup in, they'll store it throughout the brood box. It just gets incorporated into everything else that they have stored there, and then those stores are naturally used for brood food when they're eating the larvae.

When the mite hides underneath the larvae in that last feeding right before the cell gets capped, they're naturally just going to come in contact with a small amount of that sugar syrup. We've shown that they can just through contact, and there's other published literature showing that through contact, they can absorb an RNA that they come in contact with. Once they absorb that, then the RNA interference mechanism takes place, and then that's where the reproduction is shut down. You can remove the bees from the equation and it'll still happen. We're just utilizing that feeding to get them in contact with it.

Becky: The early efforts were to try to feed the mite through the feeding on the bee. Correct?

Adam: Yes. There was some early literature showing that there was what we call horizontal transmission from bee to mite or larva to mite, but we've done what we call soaking studies where we completely remove the bee and the larvae from the equation and just put a drop of the solution that contains RNA on a mite. There's one study from a university that they just shared some of their data with it, but they attached a fluorescent dye to it, and they were able to track the RNA into the mite. It's pretty cool stuff.

Becky: Let's now take a step back as far as delivery of Norroa through the syrup. Could you explain that to everybody, please?

Adam: It comes in a premixed, ready-to-use pouch. One dose is two pouches per brood box. All you need to do is peel a sticker off. The pouches already have perforations, and then that the stickers covering up and you just place them face up on either your bottom board or on top of the frames once the sticker's off and you can walk away. The bees will take in the syrup, move it around, store it, do what bees do with syrup. Their pouches are usually empty within a day or two, and once they're empty, you can come and take the pouches off, remove them. That's all a beekeeper needs to do.

Becky: Is timing critical at all, as far as what time of the season that you decide to feed them?

Adam: As I said, it's not a knockdown. It's really important that it's applied when mites are low. Because it's not going to kill any mites, it's going to preserve whatever your mite level is when you apply it. You want to apply it ideally if you do an alcohol wash, if you're washing zeros and ones. Zero and 1%, I should say. If you've got a 5% mite load, that's not the right time to use Norroa, at least alone because at best you're going to preserve a 5% mite load, and that's not something that any beekeeper really wants to have in their hive.

The one nice thing is that last fall, I did a co-treatment study down in Florida where I put Norroa in at the same time as a couple of different knockdowns. I was mainly just looking to see if there's negative interactions, if it would decrease the efficacy of Norroa. It lasted just as long, it did everything that it was supposed to do, but we did see really good responses in the mite loads as well that the knockdowns did what they were supposed to do. The mite loads dropped, they held low, they did everything that you would want to see, and I'm repeating that again this year. Those trials are just kicking off.

Becky: You said bottom board feeding. I've never heard of that before. Can you walk me through that?

Adam: Yes. Because they just come in a pouch, the pouches are pretty small and pretty flat, there's enough space to set them on your bottom board if you don't want to put them on top of your frames. You need a half-inch of space for the pouches. Depending on the type of lid and everything that you have, you may need to use some shims or a spacer. They generally don't fit between boxes unless you do use a spacer, but if a person doesn't want to use a spacer, doesn't have the room, putting them on the bottom board always leaves enough room. For the space that the bottom board provides between the bottom of the frames that are above it, there's always enough room there.

Becky: Are you recommending that you do potentially a spring knockdown so you've got that really low population, and then you go ahead and use Norroa right before the supers go on?

Adam: It really depends on where a person is at, what kind of beekeeper they are. In a lot of our trials, what happened was the colonies were split because our trials were with commercial beekeepers. They never really got a true brood break, at least not coming into spring. What happens was the colonies were split, and then about a month after those splits, then we introduced Norroa because those splits were really the brood break that they got. We knew that they had low mite loads because of that, and then we introduced Norroa.

Now, if you're more of a hobbyist that gets a brood break coming out of winter, me in North Dakota, I'm going to come out of winter in April or May with low mite loads just because of the six-month brood break that I'm going to get. I have no reason to do a knockdown treatment. I can come out in to winter, get a little bit of weight on my bees, get my queens laying, and then I can apply Norroa. Given the season, the honey-producing season I've got before fall, and my queens start to slow down, that might be the only treatment I need for the year, depending on how long fall drags on up here.

Now, if you're in the south, you don't get much of a brood break, and your queens go all year, it may be something where you need to look at a knockdown, at least to get started, and start a rotation that includes Norroa. Then you can figure out how it's going to fit into your IPM strategy.

Becky: Is it allowed if you have supers on? Because you don't want it to go to the supers, right?

Adam: Right. There is a tolerance exemption. If it goes into the honey, it's safe; there's no problem there. It just won't be effective because you want it for brood food. We recommend not applying it with supers on, but because the pouches get emptied so quickly, I tell beekeepers to think about it like you would any other sugar syrup. Once those pouches are empty, maybe give it about a week, and then you can put your supers on because they'll be done moving that syrup around, they'll be done storing it, they'll have it where they're going to keep it, and then you can put your supers on. From the time pouches go on to the time you can super is 7 to maybe 10 days, and that's just for effectiveness.

Becky: What about if I have nucs in the spring, so five-frame nucs? Is there a size requirement for the treatment?

Adam: That's where we have some work we need to do.

Becky: Let's just say you decide, Adam. [laughs]

Adam: The label says two pouches per brood box, but it doesn't make sense for two pouches for a nuc. That nuc will eventually build into a larger colony unless it's something that you're going to keep it in a new box all summer for some reason. Maybe you're just going to use that for constant queen production, and that's how you do it, that might be something special. It is something that we want to revisit for weird situations like that and get some clarity, but right now, by the label, it says two pouches per brood box, but all of those were done using 8 or 10-frame brood boxes.

Becky: I'm going to ask one more question. Say I've got [laughs] a single-- Maybe I'll ask more than one. Jeff's got a quizzical look right now. I'm in the spring, my brood is in one box, but then I'm going to add another deep. If I treat that single deep where there is my only brood box, and add another deep, am I not protected?

Adam: That is a great question. That's exactly what we did in a lot of our trials, was they started in singles that were treated with just two pouches because it was one brood box, and then they built up into doubles, and we still saw 18 weeks of protection. That is a great question and something that we do stress. Now, if you had one box that had your queens laying in it and another box on top that was full of honey stores, that's one where I would recommend four pouches because I would worry that those two pouches would get really diluted down and spread out.

Then you would get a large section that wouldn't have any of the active ingredients stored in it, and you wouldn't get consistent dosing to the varroa mites. Just to make sure that you're getting really consistent contact with your varroa mites, that's when I would want four pouches, just to make sure it's really evenly dispersed across those boxes.

Jeff: Stable is the sugar syrup solution, the vedescana?

Adam: Vadescana.

Jeff: Vadescana. What's the shelf life? Do you have to worry about temperature on a really hot week or a really cold week? Is there a difference?

Adam: Another good question. In the pouches, it has a two-year shelf life. For storage, we're just telling basically you don't want to store it anywhere where it's long-term going to be 90 degrees or hotter. Try and store it around room temperature, or colder is okay. We've done freeze-thaw tests, so if the pouches freeze and then they thaw back out, that's fine. It doesn't have any impact on them. That was something I was really concerned with-

Becky: That's nice.

Adam: -again, being in North Dakota. I always think about if I order something and it's going to get shipped to me, it's going to freeze in the mail [crosstalk] in the winter. Exactly. There's no problem. Even if you're out working your bees and it's going to sit in your hot pickup for the day, that's fine. You don't want it to sit in your hot pickup all week long and never come inside. If you bring your box in at the end of the day, set it in the hopefully ideally climate-controlled garage where it comes down to like 70 degrees or something, then go out the next day, totally fine. As far as application, there's no temperature restrictions. We're really proud to say if you can work your bees, you can apply Norroa.

Becky: If a beekeeper is going to get packages or nucs next year, start new colonies, do you recommend, especially with a package, installing that package and letting that whole first box get built out prior to application?

Adam: When you say built out, do you mean building out the wax or--

Becky: Yes. A lot of people will get a package, put it on foundation, and they're feeding syrup at the same time, so a lot is going on. If you've got a package colony on foundation or even a nuc on foundation, you might be feeding your bees. For those beekeepers who want to try Norroa, what would be the best strategy?

Adam: That's another really great question. I think to me-- and that's not something that we've experimented with, we haven't run any trials with that, so this is just playing out in my mind. I think it makes the most sense to let them build that wax out at least and put on a little bit of weight. You don't want this to be their only source of syrup, their only source of carbohydrates, or else the adults are going to eat it too.

That goes back a little bit to when I was talking about coming out of winter. You don't want to apply this first thing. You want to give them a shot of syrup after a long northern winter. Let them put on a little bit of weight so that they have a food source. Let your queens start laying, otherwise the adults are just going to consume it right away. Your workers are going to eat it, and there won't be any active ingredient left by the time your queens start laying and your hive mite population actually trying to build.

There's a little bit of strategy coming into it. It's not the kind of treatment that you can just throw in your hive whenever you want and walk away from. You need to be thinking a little bit, but the payoff at the end of that is huge.

Jeff: What about the possibility for building resistance to the active ingredients? How can a gene mutation happen that would unblock the messaging that is taking place with Norroa?

Adam: Definitely something that we're thinking about, something we're watching for. It's absolutely possible. It's not quite as likely as some of the other miticides for a couple of reasons. Because it's not a knockdown, we don't need to necessarily worry about sub-lethal dosing that would allow a mite to come in contact with it but not die, and then develop a resistance and pass that on. If they come in contact with it, they're not going to reproduce, and then there's no offspring to pass that on to.

Part of that comes from the reproductive. Because mites are inbreeders, they lay a male and then females, and those siblings reproduce with each other. That's how they mutate so quickly and pass that on, but because they're not reproducing or they're not laying eggs, we are less likely to see that.

One of the really nice things of an approach like this is even if there is a mutation, we're not stuck with some random chemical that is just not effective anymore. It's genetic-based. If we can isolate what that genetic mutation is, we have the opportunity to try and alter the sequence that we're using and pivot along with that. We just need to make really sure that that mutation doesn't cause it to overlap with something else, like a honeybee or just another organism, to make sure that it's still safe. That needs to be a top priority in everything we do. It at least presents that opportunity to be flexible.

Becky: We're obviously also worried about viral loads in the colony because of those varroa being vectors. If the varroa will still have the opportunity to feed, but they're not going to be doing the feeding on the developing brood like they would, but they could still feed on adults, do we know what viral loads look like over the season in the colony, or do we have any data on that yet?

Adam: Basic disease biology says just what you said: with fewer vectors, there's going to be less disease transmission. That's what we would expect to see. We don't have that data yet, but I am in the middle of gathering that. I have an actually 36-week study that started in the spring. I'm following a whole bunch of colonies all the way through February and taking disease samples at different periods. That will come out when that study is done. I actually just got some stuff in from my lab today. I got an email from my lab. There's a whole bunch of data that I'm right in the middle of right now. That is to come because that's something I'm really interested in.

Becky: That's really exciting. What about efficacy in the form of survival data? Bees that are feeding on Norroa, do you have data that show that colonies have a higher survival rate?

Adam: The one that we point to the most is a field trial that we did in 2022. We mainly point to it just because it has the biggest sample size. It's the most robust trial that we did, but across five states, so Idaho, North Dakota, Maine, Florida, and Georgia. It incorporated over 1,000 colonies. We had nearly 75% survival rate based on-- The biggest difference from all the colonies was one spring treatment of Norroa compared to a spring treatment of a traditional miticide that had 45% winter survival. Then they both received a traditional knockdown in the fall.

Jeff: I see that it's approved in basically, I think, 18 states plus Washington, DC, and it's rolling out.

Adam: Yes, it might be more. We received Alaska yesterday, and I don't know how long until this goes out, so it might be more.

Jeff: Yes, as the recording, and that included Alaska, as I saw.

Adam: Okay.

Jeff: I would encourage our listeners to check with your state and make sure it's registered or available. I have to assume that all states are working on getting this approved.

Adam: There are three that we are still working on our submission to. Three in the territory.

Jeff: Is that a publicly available list on the GreenLight or Norroa website?

Adam: We're working on it. We're working on getting a tracker up so you can check your state and see where things are at. I don't know how they do that, so I can't fill you in anymore.

Jeff: I can't ask you where it is with Washington State? Okay, I got the message.

Adam: You can always email us and ask. I just don't know how to do the tracker. I barely got logged in to do the podcast today. [laughter] I'm not a computer guy, so I can answer emails and stuff like that. I can't do the website.

Jeff: I wouldn't be a beekeeper without asking the cost per treatment or the cost for Norroa to the beekeeper.

Adam: It's pricier than the other mite treatment options out there right now. That's one of our biggest priorities is to bring that down. Part of that is just scaling up our production. Being a new treatment, a new company that just got registered, getting our full-scale plant up and running, and getting the economies of scale right is going to help with that. We're working on new delivery methods for commercial beekeepers that will hopefully be available next spring, as long as the EPA signs off on it by then. It's going to be a relabel. That'll bring costs down for a more commercially friendly delivery option.

We're already starting to test some new formulations that'll bring costs down in the future. Everything that we're doing is to bring costs down in the future.

Jeff: If you were to get out your crystal ball, where do you see this technology would be in, say, three to five years?

Adam: The lowest hanging fruit is coming up with easier ways to deliver it besides just the pouches, because we know that that's not commercially friendly. If it's two pouches per brood box, even if they're treating singles coming from North Dakota, with a heavily commercial state, we know that that's not friendly to have thousands and thousands of pouches. That's the lowest hanging fruit, coming up with better ways to address that. We're going to be testing against Tropilaelaps in Thailand this fall.

Jeff: You took my next question.

Adam: I figured that was going to be a big one. There's a lot of research going on against viruses and different hive pests. Things like that, we're very aware of. Beyond just RNA, we're a very science-based company. We're just looking at the problems that are facing beekeepers and trying to find the best science-based solutions that we can to try and address those.

Becky: Just for clarification, when you say you're looking at something against Tropilaelaps, then you just have to come up with that new unique sequence?

Adam: We're actually testing vadescana against Tropi, along with some new sequences because we don't know if vadescana is going to work or not. We're just saying that we're testing against it. We also don't know how that's going to work with EPA yet. That's a whole new ball of wax for registering against a pest that isn't present in the United States.

Jeff: This is thrilling. After this last season and battling varroa, having a new tool available, hopefully next spring, Washington approves it. It gives me hope for 2026.

Adam: Like I said, that's the reason I came out with GreenLight, was seeing what was going on, seeing the technology and what they were doing. The possibilities that were there was really exciting.

Becky: Very important. Honestly, I've said it before, our industry is so small. To have such great technology being invested in so that beekeepers can benefit from it is really exciting. I do hope that beekeepers try this out.

Adam: Yes. If nothing else, like you said, having another option available. We're not going to claim to be a silver bullet; we never have. There's a right time to use this. There's definitely a wrong time to use Norroa. At those points, you need to turn to the traditional miticides and use a good rotation and figure out what your rotation is, where everything fits in. With that, we can definitely build a healthier industry.

[music]

Jeff: Well, thanks a lot, Adam. We've really enjoyed having you on today and look forward to having you back. If you're at NAHBE, we look forward to talking to you again then, and we'll get our latest updates from you.

Adam: Yes, I'll come on at any time. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: I'm glad we had Adam on today. That's some great news.

Becky: It's honestly really exciting. It's another tool, and a lot of beekeepers are really going to benefit because once you deliver the Norroa-- I haven't tried it, but it sounds like if you get it right, you've got some more protection. It's going to hopefully make a difference as far as helping beekeepers keep their bees alive. There's a spot in the summer where that varroa production gets really high, and the honey supers are really, really high too. Hopefully, if beekeepers can time it correctly, they can get some better control during the time when varroa have really been reproducing to the point of death to the colony come fall. Fingers crossed here.

Jeff: I'm excited because it targets the varroa, and it does not impact the bees. In everything else we do, there's a negative impact on the bees. It might be one or two bees or it might be a bunch of bees or it might just be the queen, whatever, but this just goes after the varroa. It's going to do the job and help protect the bees into the fall and into the next season.

[music]

Becky: We have another tool. That toolbox is getting full. I'm excited. [chuckles]

Jeff: I want one tool that does it all. [chuckles.

Becky: Yes.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the Reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast.

We also appreciate our longtime sponsors Global Patties, Strong Microbials, Bee Smart Designs, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode. Most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us. If you have any questions or feedback, just head over to our website and drop us a note. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.

[00:50:12] [END OF AUDIO]