Terra Vera Update: Hive Health, Biosecurity, and Varroa Control (379)

Terra Vera Update: Hive Health, Biosecurity, and Varroa Control (379)

Arnie Goyeboff

My name is Arnie Goyeboff. I'm from Mar a Beekeeper from Maryland and I'm at the North American Honey Bee Show and I'm lucky enough to be stopping in front of the Beekeeping Today podcast and I actually got to see the broadcasters today which to me is one of my treats of the show so you guys keep up good work.

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

Becky Masterman
And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff Ott
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. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, the Leave comments and feedback on each episode and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com. Thank you, Arnie, for that wonderful opening from the floor of the North American Honey Bee. Expo. We really appreciate that.

Becky Masterman
I love it. Maybe we've had Maryland before, but it doesn't ring a bell.

Jeff Ott
Yes, we've had Maryland. I'll check the map, but Arnie will put your name on there anyways. Fantastic Well Becky, it's finally April. I'm so relieved.

Becky Masterman
You know, April in Minnesota usually means we have another snowstorm in store for us. So Talk to me in May, Jeff. Talk to me in May.

Jeff Ott
When I lived in Colorado, we could always count on one major snowstorm at the beginning of April sometime. It would be sixty or seventy degrees the next day, but there would always be one major snowstorm.

Becky Masterman
December or January that sticks around for a long time. But it will be nice to just be able to get to the bees consistently.

Jeff Ott
This is an exciting month because for many beekeepers in the mid and northern tier of the United States where beekeepers are starting to receive their packages and their nucs, and it just becomes a very B-centric time in their lives.

Becky Masterman
It is. I mean queens are just starting to be produced. They're getting out there for a lot of us, which is very exciting and package season, nuc season, it's it's there's nothing better. Well, okay, maybe honey harvest season, I don't know.

But it is starting a new colony is so exciting. So congratulations to all of you beekeepers out there who are either purchasing your first packages and nucs or beekeepers are producing packages and nucs too. So It's an exciting time.

Jeff Ott
It's exciting time. Becky, we continue our ongoing questions from our listeners for the Hive IQ tool. And I think you have a new question for us queued up.

Becky Masterman
I do. This is this is a fun one. It's from Elaine Tim, who's very excited because Elaine has a new Kenyan style top bar hive. How many of those do you have?

Jeff Ott
None. I have zero. And you?

Becky Masterman
I have zero. I know that I very greatly enjoyed our conversation last year with Vicky Atkinson about top archives. So I've got that conversation in my head. But Elaine is actually she's thinking things through.

She's wondering how she's going to actually manage Varroa. in this Hive configuration or Hive style. And she was wondering specifically how she could use ForMic Pro or Apigard. And boy does that ever pose a little bit of a problem because As you remember, Vicki explained to us how the top bars really do block access to the brood nest.

And both Apigard and Formic Pro, you need that vaporization or off-gassing of the chemicals. So.

Jeff Ott
And it's heavier, right? So it sink it's basically sinks. It doesn't rise up.

Becky Masterman
So in a regular Langstroth colony, you put that in the brood nest, in the middle of the brood nest usually.

Jeff Ott
For our listeners who aren't familiar with the Kenyan style top bar hive, let's just restate what you said. Is that the top bars actually sit side by side, forming almost a solid wall or solid ceiling above the frames so that you can't lay anything on top and expect that vapor to off gas and go down between the frames.

Becky Masterman
Right. That's well said. And I love that she's asking us, but the honest question, and other people have asked us this before, is I don't know the answer. I would reach out specifically when it comes to Format Pro to the actual producers of the product to see if they have any information.

So not Apiary's Nature Own Design, Nature's Own Design Apiary products. I would check with them because they might have a little bit more information and they're going to be a better source. than I am personally. On Apiguard, same thing, reach out to the manufacturer to see if they have any modifications or any advice.

as far as using their product. When it comes to mic control, you just want to be really careful about not using a product in a different style hive if it has not been tested and approved by the manufacturer because you could be using it off label. or and you could damage your colony. So my advice is be careful and I wish I had better advice.

But I love she added uh Elaine added she knows that the vapor, oxalic vapor or dribble might be helpful and then she also mentioned using some drone comb removal. So she's she is definitely thinking of different options and also incorporating some genetic stock that has some mite tolerance or resistance

Jeff Ott
Yeah, I would definitely be a little bit more cautious on the use of the harsher chemicals such as Formic Pro and Epicard, just because they've only been tested in the standard uh Langstreth Hive box configuration and that's how it's all been dosed and figured. I would feel comfortable using the OAV Oxalic acid vaporization. I've used that in a long lang, and so it's not the exact same, but it's similar in layout, and that was as successful as OAV can be. Yeah, that's a good question, Elaine.

And if you hear back from Nod or anybody else who has top bar hives and how they apply those Varroa treatments, let us know. We'd like to let our the other listeners know as well.

Becky Masterman
So she gets a hive too. We don't really answer her question and then hopefully she gives us information so that we can answer the question better next time.

Jeff Ott
Coming up, we have return of the folks from Teravera, Carlos Pereira and Dr. Jeff Pettis here to talk to us and give us an update on their new product that is a amino acid.

Becky Masterman
supplement I think it's a supplement that also interferes with rural nights in the colony. So

Jeff Ott
Well we'll get a full update from them coming right up after these words from our sponsors.

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Jeff Ott
Hey everybody, welcome back, sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table. And I'm not sure if I can recount where everybody is. So we have Dr. Jeff Pettis.

And Carlos Pereira from Terra Vera. Guys, welcome to the show. Good to be with you.

Becky Masterman
I'm pretty sure we've got like all corners of the US. Taken care of. Where are you, Carlos?

Carlos Perea
Just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, kind of southwest. And Jeff, you're in

Jeff Pettis
Virginia. Maryland. No, close. I'm I'm in Del Marva, Delaware, Maryland, uh Virginia.

The the Delaware Maryland Virginia Peninsula. It's uh A beautiful eastern shore, Maryland.

Jeff Ott
Maryland. All right. We have the country covered. Gentlemen, welcome back to the show.

And we're going to get an update from you on the latest news from Terra. And before we go down that road, let's go around the table and if you could introduce yourself to our listeners, give us a little bit about your background either in the research or bees, and then we'll we'll pick it up after that

Jeff Pettis
I'm uh Jeff Pettis. I'm an entomologist by trade, worked for over 20 years with the U. S. Department of Ag in Beltsville, Maryland, at the Bee Research Lab there.

a research scientist. I'm still doing science and I started a consulting company some years ago now and recently I've joined working consulting with uh Teravera about a promising new product for hive health Carlos.

Carlos Perea
Well I'm Carlos Perea and I'm Jeff Pettis' new best friend. Or at least I wish that would be best dreams. Carlos Perea and I've been in technology and high tech as uh executive or an entrepreneur for the last 25, I guess, years. I don't want to admit how old I am.

I got the good fortune of running a water technology company and then kind of start a teravera around the idea of making agriculture more sustainable. So I guess you could say I really like using technology to make life better for people and or the environment. Apivera is a brand underneath Teravera. It's not a different company.

It's, you know, it we created epivarab really to make sure that the people in the plant world weren't confused by what we were doing with bees and vice versa. The ironic thing is that now my team spends ninety-eight percent of its time on bee-related stuff and we've kinda let other distribution and research partners take over the plant world. Like literally we have folks that are working with Danforth Plant Research Center, which is the leading institute for food security, at least in the US, if not North America. So we're doing fascinating stuff there, but all the team and it and Jeff can attest to this.

It's funny. I mean, I said it was a happy accident, but I couldn't keep the team from doing this. Like they literally Like I had to follow my team going, we want to keep bees, we want to help beekeepers. It it somebody I'll write a case study on this thing for business schools it was fascinating.

You gotta follow your employees and people are just passionate about it. But Apivera is a brand underneath Teravera, is I guess the key point.

Jeff Ott
Very good. Well we're here to talk about A Bivera or Teravera. Can you give us a little bit of the history and background of how this got started?

Carlos Perea
Yeah, so we started Teravera, myself, and a partner, a core technologist, brilliant guy. And the idea was we came across a chemistry that was uh basically biomimicry. It's a chemistry that bodies, mammals, produce naturally, and it turns out that it's a very effective oxidant, meaning it works like oxidants do, like ozone or chlorine or hydrogen peroxide, but it's very safe. Turned out it was very safe for people and plants.

And we started the company Terra, and if it's not obvious to your viewers or listeners rather, Teravera is Latin for beautiful or true earth. And we thought then and we still do that we have a chemistry that can really change agriculture to make it more sustainable by getting rid of a lot of the toxic chemistries that we use to grow our food production. It was only a happy accident, literally, from one of our customers, that got us realizing the chemistry was not only toxic to pathogens like bacteria and molds, but also to certain pests, including mites. It was kind of I guess our post-it note moment where we had that discovery.

That was about three years ago, and uh it was a pretty short stretch before we realized how important that could be, particularly to the folks who are trying to keep bees alive and suffering from the varroa mite and other diseases. So oxidants are just a category of uh chemistries that occur in nature. So think of how our planet cleans itself as the ozone. The ozone is an oxidative type of environment.

Ozone is also something that we use regularly. Oxidants have been used for a hundred years to keep water from virus and bacteria that would get you ill. So think of it this way. 150 years ago you are more likely to die from drinking bad water or having exposure to those kinds of conditions than anything else.

And even today in the developing world I think it's eight out of ten hospital beds are occupied by people who have been exposed to unsafe drinking water or sanitary conditions. So oxidance is really what's allowed us to treat our water. Oxidants just are a set of chemistries that basically lys a cell membrane. They're again naturally occurring.

Your body produces them as part of your natural defense mechanism. And that type of oxidant, it's called organic chloramine, or a class of organic chloramines, is the chemistry that we used to start teravero with.

Jeff Pettis
Hey Jeff, I can add to that a little bit. Just common household bleach is an oxidant. And what Carlos was talking about, they use chlorine a lot. Chlorine is an oxidant they use in water treatment.

And the other one that people are familiar with is hydrogen peroxide. We use it, you know, cuts and things. That's that's an oxidant in that so we have a very, very safe oxidant that's much safer than bleach and much safer even than hydrogen peroxide.

Carlos Perea
Yeah, and I would say let me just add to that, because uh it it can get confusing and I realize that not all the uh audience or beekeeper is going to be familiar with this, but the way I would put it is All oxidants work similarly so that we understand the mode of action and equally importantly the current nature. So bees actually use oxidants as part of their natural defense mechanism in honey and there's research in that area that I think is pretty fascinating, at least to me anyway. And I think the one thing that people should know about oxidants is they can be very reactive, but once they're done, they biodegrade. And our chemistry does that.

It biodegrades completely into inert ingredients. So it's only a very temporary kind of chemistry, if you will.

Becky Masterman
Is this the same as like any kind of a pesticide or medicine where A little will hurt the target organism, but not the organism that you're trying to keep alive?

Carlos Perea
Yes, in a way, but ours is unique in a in a couple of ways. One is The nature of the chemistry that we've produced, again, it's it's biomimicking mammals' immune systems. We produce these chemistries naturally. It is toxic to mites and other pathogens, viruses, and bacteria, and I want to talk more about viruses at some point.

But it turns out at these concentrations, it's non-toxic to bees, to plants, and to humans. Now, at some level, everything can become toxic, right? Even water can become toxic at certain levels. But at these levels, we kind of found this sweet spot where we can take out what we don't want to have in a B colony and leave behind what we do.

And that's I think the core I guess differentiator of the technologies, it's not going to harm the bees at these concentrations, nor will it harm the beekeeper. And we have plenty of data to support both of those statements.

Becky Masterman
I'm assuming you did some kind of cage studies and then some kind of colony level studies.

Jeff Pettis
So actually Becky, that's exactly why I kind of got convinced to uh to consult with Terra Vera. They were convincing me that it was safe and then we did some preliminary trials with cage bees, young, newly emerged bees and older bees, applying it at different rates. Didn't see any mortality in the cage bee work. Then we went to colonies and marked open brood and actually sprayed or fogged the material directly into open brood and followed that brood too to maturity and didn't see mortality.

So pretty convinced that it was safe at the concentrations we were using. And so then we've done we've done more testing than that, but those initial cage work and the open brood, unsealed young brood work convinced me that it was safe.

Jeff Ott
You were talking about a treatment for varroa. It's uh adult varroa.

Carlos Perea
Well let me start by saying, yeah, all oxidants are very effective at killing fungi bacteria, these single cell pathogens that you would want to eliminate and again, the most common thing we can think of an everyday application is probably our pool water or drinking water, which almost always have oxidants in the Metatrace Mount. It's why you know If you go to a public drinking fountain or you go to your friend's house, you're not going to get sick from that water because it will have a trace amount of oxidant in it. The oxidant that we're using, again, we used it initially to treat diseases on plants. And then it was a customer of ours who came back and said, hey, this is working great.

You're we're keeping these bacteria and fungi and other issues away from our plants, but you didn't tell us it worked well on spider mites. We had to be convinced. And so honestly we were growing unhealthy plants and trying to cultivate these nasty mites and then we found that we could kill the mites as well as aphids. And then it was an intrepid technologist who ended up at UC Davis who said, Hey, I'd really like to try this on varroomites.

Is it is it harmful to varroom mites? And turned out we can kill varroumites on contact within Depends on a few things, but generally speaking, within a couple of minutes, you'll see the varella stop moving, at least in the petri dish underneath the microscope. You know, we have some theories as to why that is, etc. But that was the next phase, as is as Dr.

Pettis mentioned, is that got us fascinated with were we toxic to bees? Because you know, we started the company really with the idea that we wanted to help people grow plants and be more sustainable. We want to be a pollinator-friendly company. So we were actually not just interested in Could we kill Varroe without harming bees?

We were just interested, were we harming bees, period. And we did a lot of studies, and I'm really proud to say until last fall And Dr. Pettis, you can add to this if you have more data, but until last fall, we did not see any exposure, even repeated exposure of the chemistry causing any kind of health or mortality issues. to the bee.

So we could drown a bee before we could actually harm it with the chemistry.

Jeff Pettis
There are because we're applying it as a generally as a fog to the colony. We're fogging the colony. And if you're working in cool temperatures below fifty degrees and the bees can't dry out, then it can be a problem. So we have some caveats about when to apply it to whole colonies.

And something we haven't gotten into is we have Two different formulations that we're working on. One is a bit more powerful that you wouldn't put on live bees, and we're calling it hive wash, but it's basically a disinfectant. And that is really exciting in the sense that You fog the dead out equipment and we're killing with different tests that we've run, we're killing like 99. 9% of the pathogens in that used equipment.

So the beekeeper can go right back and use it And I'm at she's setting up a nice field trial with these package B's that I talked about. I'm getting package B's, putting them on fumigated and unfumigated comb and watching the buildup. I did that in with gamma radiated comb back in the C D days, if you're old enough to remember C D. And we got over about a month and a half or two month period, we got two extra frames of bees and almost a whole frame of brood more with gamma irradiation.

And what we're hoping is that we'll see similar fast buildup on this uh hive washed comb this you know using cleaning up dead outs basically and the other application is obviously we're calling it hive health at this point Hive health meaning we're still working on the perfect application to kill Virola, but we're killing other pathogens in the colony. And we're seeing positive effects on colony growth in addition to just knocking down varroa. So we're we're still working on the distribution and the exact timing on the varroa control, but we're super confident in the high wash right now.

Carlos Perea
Yeah, and I just want to add to that because, you know, we all have been trained in the B world to be, you know, vigilant and um maybe even terrified of Baroa. uh entropy now. And that's for good reason. But the reality is, and Jeff's Dr.

Pettis is the entomologist, I'm not, but my understanding is it's not the mites that are killing the bees, it's they're weakening the bees and then giving them the disease vectors. That is really what is causing the combination of this plus nutrition plus you know pesticide exposure is really what's causing the colonies to die off. And there are alternatives to Varella control. I think there's pluses and minuses.

I think our chemistry has a lot of advantages. But to my knowledge, there's really nothing that folks are able to put into that hive to control some of these other pathogens, particularly viral pathogens And we've done some pretty groundbreaking research that will be released here in the coming weeks that I think is fundamentally game changing. I don't know, Dr.

Jeff Pettis
Pettis, if you want to challenge that or pass to it. First of all, viruses are hard to work with and we know that there's an interaction. If we only had Varroa or only had viruses, we wouldn't have an issue. We've got them together and they're a huge issue.

And yet the beekeeper has nothing currently to use against viruses and our product is killing viruses in the hive and hopefully breaking that transmission cycle. We're still doing more testing. And then we're also acting on bacteria and fungi. So it's it we think it's a whole high whole hive health approach, not just targeting Varroa, but targeting Varroa and the pathogens and things that are present in the hive.

Becky Masterman
So are you are you fumigating and then testing the hive materials and

Jeff Pettis
Finding little or finding I know it's hard to see on the on the uh on this uh On this podcast, but uh with bacteria and fungi. With bacteria and fungi, if they're on the surface, we we're we're killing like literally Right at 100%. And the same with viruses. So now there's a if you think about a hive, though, it's super complex.

You've got cells, you've got stored pollen, everything. So we're really We are probably only surface sterilizing, but that's where the bees are going to be picking up the pathogens. That's where they're going to pick up the viruses from, uh nocema spores and things like that. So we're we're surface sterilizing when we do this hive wash.

Carlos Perea
I don't know if this was part of the question, Becky, but it's it's pretty easy. They're standardized tests that we use in hospitals and food preparation. to test for the presence of bacteria and other pathogens. Viral loads are extremely hard to test for a variety of reasons.

They're not technically living. And we've gone through some painstaking processes with some bleeding virologists to figure that out. And Jeff, Dr. Fettis could explain more how that's done, but it literally requires you to infect bees.

and then treat them and you know look at mortality rates. But that's been, I think, the groundbreaking aspect. And the way I kind of think of this for you know the layperson or myself is, you know, if you or I got bit by a mosquito in, you know, Minnesota or wherever we are, we might be annoyed, but we wouldn't be worried. But yet mosquitoes kill more people than people and all animals combined, because many of these mosquitoes are carrying diseases like malaria and other very deadly diseases.

you know, particularly in the subtropical and African areas. So it's it's the combination of the mite with the disease. And we've I've seen enough data that convinces me that you know we could have a hive that has relatively low mite count and be dead next week and we can have another colony that has a relatively high mic count and I it might be doing pretty well next week because you're not accounting for those things that you can't see the virus and the disease-causing pathogens. And so that's the part of the equation that I'm really excited about is giving beekeepers a tool that they haven't had before.

Jeff Ott
Let's take this opportunity For a quick break and we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

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Becky Masterman
Jeff, Carlos, I have to ask you, it's been about a year and a half. What's the progress since we last taught?

Carlos Perea
You know, we known for a while the chemistry is effective against mites and not toxic to bees at these concentrations. The we did some pretty l significant tests in this interim, both at a university and RD level with internally and then even on large-scale field applications. And I think we learned two fundamental things, one of which we've solved and the other we're we're in the process of solving. The first is our chemistry, and we've used this in greenhouses or variations of this chemistry in greenhouses for years.

Has historically been generated on site, on demand, using a piece of equipment, electrolytic piece of equipment. It's got some complexity, but it solves one of the fundamental limitations of this chemistry, which is It's inherently unstable. It wants to revert back to amino acids or base compounds within weeks. So you need to generate it at point of use or right before you're ready to use it.

And that works well for large-scale commercial beekeepers. It does not work well for somebody who's got, you know, 100 hives or 10 hives. It just doesn't scale well. So we spent a better part of a year figuring out how can we generate this chemistry in a different way that makes it simpler and cheaper and more accessible to every type of beekeeper, whether you have five hives or a hundred thousand hives.

So that's been a lot of the development work over the last year. And then again validating in the field what works, what doesn't work. different concentrations, it's opened up some neat things. The second part we've learned, and we've learned I think the hard way a little bit, is that the contact chemistry, it has to again come into contact with what you want to kill.

And that's pretty easy to do in small scale, but if you're a commercial beekeeper and you're treating a thousand hives, they want to be able to do this very quickly So that's been a lot of development effort and why we fumigate or liquid we tend to turn the liquid into a vapor and we can't heat it, we can't pressurize it, so it has some limitations. So that technology has really taken us a while to develop. I'm pretty excited to say that we're on the cusp now. We have some devices that work pretty well.

They may not be as fast. as some uh commercial beekeepers would like, but we're getting there pretty quickly and though that's really where the development effort has gone. But Uh Jeff, if you want to add to that.

Jeff Pettis
powder, powder. So shipping is way down. We can keep shipping to the consumer, long shelf life until you mix it. When you mix it probably has a two week shelf life.

So that development has really changed and Increase our ability to get the product out. The other thing on the distribution within a honey bee hive has always been an issue with a lot of different things. A lot of different minor size and I mean they tried all kinds of fungi, I know, at the lab logan lab and distribution was the problem. They could kill mites in the laboratory with the different fungi, but they couldn't get it distributed very well in the colony.

It wouldn't persist. So we face that same kind of issue. Getting a fog throughout the hive When it contacts Roe, it kills them. We have a plus and a minus there.

Very short-lived, very fast acting, but it also degrades really quickly. So we are looking at It offers rapid knockdown of the phoretic mites, but then if you really want mic control, you're gonna have to reapply. So there's a there's a plus and a minus there.

Carlos Perea
And the and the way we're trying to deal with that, honestly, is one by making the process very quick and painless for the beekeeper, and two, making it very inexpensive. So that's the piece that You know, I'm really excited to say I think the technology will be very quickly available to any type of beekeeper, whether they're a first-time hobbyist or a serious sideliner or the folks we work with all the time on the commercial scale. And uh and be very cost effective. And then again, you know, we think with high confidence we'll be able to use this during honey soupers because it does degrade so quickly.

There's no byproduct. And we've thought a lot about what is a byproduct that we want to leave behind. And we're leaving behind amino acids, some of which are important to the process, but also important to the bees' nutritional value as well. So we're actually leaving behind a beneficial at the end of the day, which I think is exciting and We haven't really optimized on that yet, but I think that's kind of some of the frontier work that'll happen in the next generation is leaving behind really key nutrient value to the bees as well.

Becky Masterman
Was the sterilization effect a surprise for you or was that something that you were always going for? Because we don't have a lot of tools to take care of pathogens in equipment.

Carlos Perea
Yeah, if you if you hear me giggle out loud, because I'm thinking I'm laughing inside because I sometimes have sleepless nights over this We've known, and this is historically what oxidants are really, really good at. They're really good at killing these bacteria and fungi and other, sometimes other spores as well. So we knew we had this capability, but we got so hyper-focused on Varela control, and to a lesser extent we've done some work on trope as well. But you know, we got fascinated by this work for good reason, but the part of going back and killing viruses, quite frankly, it was, you know, even though it was extensive work.

and pretty groundbreaking, I think, in some ways. We got exactly the result we expected. You know, killing a virus on a surface is for an oxidative chemistry is really straightforward. We it's why we use it again in certain applications.

It's why, you know, when we wipe off the hospital, it's done with, you know, a peroxide or a chlorine or a similar oxidative chemistry, because it just does a great job sterilizing.

Becky Masterman
I'm just thinking of some work being done by Dr. Megan Milbrath at Michigan State University who's trying to find just how long she the EFB will persist on equipment and I don't think she has an end date yet based upon hearing her and she did also mention evidence of a biofilm So I think it's it's really exciting. The virus is of course a big problem, but I think that with the increased reporting of EFB problems among beekeepers, this is it's pretty exciting. for there to be another way to take care of equipment.

Maybe not a hundred percent, but even something helps.

Jeff Pettis
I would assume we are aware of the EFB issues and I've worked in British Columbia and going into blueberries and stuff uh with increase EFB levels. Talk to Sarah Wood in Canada. She's one of the experts on EFB along with Megan. And yeah, we'd like to get Some proof we we know it'll kill EFB, but we'd like to see it, you know, prove it.

We'd like to prove that now AFB. AFB spores are a different thing, different animal. And I'm not gonna go, we're not gonna go there right now.

Becky Masterman
But if we I didn't even ask that we're gonna I didn't expect I'm not even going there.

Jeff Pettis
No, no, no. No, I mean Carl Carlos doesn't know beekeeping as well, but AFB spores are like uh yeah, they're like Fort Knox or something. Anyway, um but we You see no spores. Yeah.

But w we want to go after no SEMA and we want to go after EFB and prove experimentally that We're we're taking care of both of those. We th we believe we are, but we don't have the experimental labor.

Becky Masterman
That is something that's a potential use and that's exciting.

Carlos Perea
I am 100% convinced we could kill AFB spores. I am not 100% convinced we can do it at concentrations that won't do a lot of other bad things to kill the UFPs. That's fair enough. Yeah.

Again, it's it's that you know, this is and I think this is so fundamental. It's it's this notion of you wanna take out what you want to take out and you don't want to cause harm to what you want to don't do harm to, and it's that in-between space that you get to work with. And, you know, AFB may be above the line where in order to kill it, it might be on used equipment and there's no way we could do this you know, near a B without toxicity. I don't know that yet.

But you know, oxidative chemistries, even get back to what you said earlier, back in biofilm, is something we have a lot of experience in. Because prior to starting Teravera again, I had a water treatment company that was really focused on keeping virus and bacteria out of drinking water, but we got into many other applications from produced water. to uh cooling towers and all kinds of things in between and we dealt with a lot of biofilm issues. And biofilm is its own You know, think of it like a coral reef.

It's you know complex and it encapsulates itself and you know, it makes it really, really hard. And so I've not come across that particular application or issue of biofoam, but that would be an area that would be fascinating. The third leg of this wheel that you guys don't get to talk to is Justin Sanchez, our CTO. But he he would love to go see those kinds of problems.

He loves those kind of really difficult challenges. But yeah, kill oxidative chemistry is good at these things, but again, can you get it to where you're not causing harm is a real trick.

Jeff Ott
Do you have a product name for this yet? We keep saying oxidant.

Carlos Perea
Yeah, so we're calling the product that we want to apply to live colonies Hive Health. because it does have more properties than you know just one dimension. It leaves behind a beneficial. We know it's going to kill some of the disease-causing pathogens, and we know it'll it'll take out varroa that comes in contact with The product that we intend for sterilization of dead-outs, we're going to call hive wash.

We've played with some other names, but the reality is It's similar chemistry in how it works, but it's at much higher concentrations that we know would cause toxicity. We've actually done some tests and I don't think we've characterized it fully, Jeff, unless you and Justin have talked about it, but my guess is you'll see between 20 and 50 percent death rates if you were to apply this to a live colony. You would see toxicity. It's it's it's it's not what we want, and we take pain's taking care of the labeling to make sure it's different and it's colored and it's very clear this is for your live colony and this is not for your lab colony.

This is for your dead out, this is for sterilization. And I think that the nice thing about that application is it doesn't have the same limitation that Jeff was saying earlier, you know, where we can cause either uh too much moisture or we could cause thermal shock if we leave the bees wet. So that application doesn't have that limitation. So it's much easier for us to apply.

We can dip the equipment, we can spray it with a handout sprayer. There's very cheap, inexpensive backpack sprayers, etc. That's an easy, easy problem. It's the live hives that present us a little bit more of a challenge

Becky Masterman
Now, you've done a soft launch of these products?

Carlos Perea
Yeah, we've been working with commercial beekeepers throughout most of the last eighteen months to get their feedback. I think commercial beekeepers are fascinating. You know, all beekeepers are, but the commercial folks think Can you make it faster? Can you make it cheaper?

Can you make it faster? Can you make it cheaper? And, you know, I think we've gotten the expense part down to where it's pretty darn cost effective and e relative to any alternative and certainly for what it can do. But the faster piece is kind of we're on the cusp of that.

We know within about five minutes we can get great, great coverage that will give us very good results. And they really want something closer to two minutes. Of course they want it to be lightweight, portable, etc. And we have some folks in the field who are using this at high scale and they and they figured it out, but we're trying to integrate it into the product to make sure that's available to everybody at that level.

And we're pretty close. I think you'll see us You know, you can buy our product today on s on online. Both products are available. You know, we're we're making it very easy for folks to sample and try it.

But for the people who are really trying to fumigate or treat multiple hives, I think we're within weeks, maybe a couple months of having a product that I'll feel very confident in. for d the delivery. The chemistry is nailed. I think the chemistry, you know, we'll we'll come up with some other variations, but the chemistry today and those two variations, they work really well.

Jeff Ott
Was there a uh regulation process that you had to step through to get this approved for the hive health?

Jeff Pettis
The hive health we're we're uh we won't be making any particular claims about parole. We're talking about improving hive health And it's kind of a varroa is a is a side, you know, it's collateral damage. Now we are working with EPA and trying to get it labeled, but it as it comes out it won't be it won't have EPA approval as a Vroa control agent Part of that is we had a good conversation with a commercial beekeeper said, There's so many broad control products out there. We need overall hive health.

You're you're missing the mark by saying We're controlling Varua. We're controlling pathogens. We're we're doing a lot more to your hive than just controlling varroa. So but we do plan to seek EPA approval, but it'll take a little bit more time.

Becky Masterman
But beekeepers today can log on to your site and buy both the product and then the fumigation?

Carlos Perea
Yeah, so they can buy either chemistry today. and either the health product or the wash product. And we have a variety of modes and how they can apply the wash product. On the health product, we have a commercial scale applicator and we're working to release a improved version of a what we call an onhive help uh an onhive or portable applicator.

We released those products and we found some variations in how they were performing in the field. Not to bore anybody with it, but it just has to do with Electricity and thermal management, and we figured that out. So those products are available. They're probably a little bit back ordered, but you can get any of these products online today.

It's just the applicators you might be waiting a month or two for.

Jeff Ott
Yeah, the hive wash products. We've had uh a couple questions come in to us this last season to the podcast asking about what to do with old equipment and how do I prepare old equipment for reuse or Can I sell it or can I buy it? And this is an option for those beekeepers who want to pick up some used equipment and maybe treat it and kind of give a little bit of protection for their purchase for their bees.

Becky Masterman
Can you let me know though what it looks like, Jeff, to fumigate equipment?

Jeff Pettis
We could send you a little video.

Becky Masterman
Oh that'd be cool. A video would be cool to for us to share. But then but just to tell us now Is you are you putting it all in your garage and then washing what are we doing?

Jeff Pettis
So there's a uh there's a device that generates the fog and then we're usually putting a Like it looks like a small super, like a super on top of the hive, and the fog is with some fans is pushed down through the hive. And well, or the it Like we stacked five deep boxes and put that on top and fumigate down through the stack of of uh a bee box empty bee boxes.

Becky Masterman
And then what are you wearing for personal protective equipment? He's saying nothing, everybody. And he looks perfectly healthy.

Jeff Pettis
That was actually yeah, I um it took care of all my uh my pneumonia. No. I it took it took me a while to get comfortable, but It that's that's one of the beauties of it. It really has we there's no personal protective equipment required.

It is uh like a like a bleach, a weak bleach And you if you have it on your hands, you can feel uh a little slippery kind of material. And if you have you wear your best shirt out in the field, you might get some you might get some bleaching effect. So it has a bleaching effect But as far as uh human health issues that we don't s foresee any need for personal protective equipment. Yep.

Carlos Perea
Yeah, let me let me add to that too, because it you know, we we take that we take that so seriously. Like it's not It's not enough the product's effective. It has to be safe. And the two pieces, I guess, of info I'd share is we've been doing this in greenhouses now for five years, and there's generally no re-entry interval.

So folks We'll walk around not just a plant that's been sprayed, but a whole greenhouse that's been fumigated. And when I looked at the chemistry, there's literature on this. Again, because our bodies produce it naturally There's medical research using this chemistry at about 10 times the concentration that we would use it in even in a high wash application, much less a colony health application. And it's been used for conjunctivitis, so literally spraying in people's eyes for pink eye, and cystic fibrosis, so bronchial infection So the medical data is pretty clear that it's non-toxic to humans at these concentrations, or even 10x the concentrations that we're using it at.

And it's again because our bodies produce it naturally that humans are kind of certainly we're not going to say immune, but just tolerate it these chemistries very, very well. So

Becky Masterman
You're kinda taking the fun and danger out of biosecurity.

Carlos Perea
So You know, that that is the fun thing is uh people get very fascinated. There's no way this chemistry Is that safe? I can touch it, I can smell it, I can taste it, and literally we've had people taste it. It tastes kind of like Sour Patch Kids.

So it It's got a funny taste to it. But the uh then they say there's no way this can kill a mite, and then you put it under a microscope and you put it in within about thirty to fifty to maybe a minute and a half the mite stops moving and they're like, are they dead? And then come back twenty-four hours later and it's it's pretty dead. It's it's a f it's counterintuitive, right?

We think that if it's gonna be effective, it's gonna be toxic. But nature's smarter than us, and it's figured out something that does a great job, but is perfectly safe and biodegrades, and I think that's the most important part, is it? It's not just safe in the moment, it's completely safe after the fact because there's nothing left.

Jeff Pettis
No residue. A quick follow-up, tropalapse mites are even lighter, lighter in their cuticle, they die even quicker. They die even more quickly. And but still it's an application problem.

So we're working on that But I want to re- revisit the conjunctivitis. If you know pink eye, it can be bacterial or viral. And that would work on both. And it's the same it's the reason we know that we're killing viruses and bacteria and fungi.

But until just recently we didn't have any viral data. Now we've got really strong viral data that and viruses in Varroa are the probably the two things that are really hammering some of the bee colony. We're we're acting on both of those.

Carlos Perea
Jeff, I just want to mention you know some of the work you did on queen rearing, you know, because we've got the questions as a safe, but I think this might be illustrative as to

Jeff Pettis
I went to work with a uh queenbreeder I've worked with a long time, and we thought, well, you know, what is this going to do in a queen rearing context? And in qu a lot of queen rearing, you you graft and Becky you probably grafted cells and then you put them in a queenless colony and they start for one day then they start ro and then they'll often move them to a finisher colony. So I said, well what'll happen if I fumigate Those newly started cells. They're in the first to second instar.

They've just been started. I put them in a in a box, just a simple box. You fumate them for two minutes or four minutes. Then we put 'em in the finishers.

They were statistically heavier queens in and I was kind of and we still okay, so first of all Wait, wait, you skipped over the part that none of them there was no mortality. I mean that was No mortality was but even then the ones that w they were all reared out at equal rates to the untreated controls, and then they were heavier. And it's like we really can't explain it except it's just a kind of a general thought thing that Well, if it fumigated the cell and even up into the cell, added a little bit of almost like hydrogen peroxide is in royal jelly, and we're adding a little bit more. Maybe the bees just perceived those cells in a different way and fed them better or whatever.

Anyway, it was it was striking. It was striking and we're doing follow-up work on that. So we're doing a lot of follow-up work to try to understand it But the good news was, and there's several publications out there that say I mean, you could go to the extreme, but heavier queens are generally more productive and da da. So we're now gonna follow them through this season, mating I did 'em just in the pupil stage.

I let 'em go to right queen cells and wade the pupee. Now we're gonna mate them and put them in commercial colonies and follow longevity and stuff. But I was I was taken aback by those results. I mean and can't fully explain it But it was positive.

Let's just put it this way. Fumigating those queen cells ended up being a very positive thing.

Becky Masterman
I've said it before, but we're in this industry where we just do not have great biosecurity protocols We starting with the hive tool, we move from colony to colony to colony, and the colony move from colony to colony, and equipment we move from colony to colony. And just because we can't see the viruses or the or bacteria does not or microsporidia does not mean they're not there. And so it's it's really exciting that you're going in that direction because I think the even recent research, it just it screams that we need better biosecurity protection.

Carlos Perea
So Becky, thank you for bringing this up because and and by the way, you you've made my day because we do it's so obvious to me now that you said it, but we do this all day long with people who grow plants. And we literally have many users who will take their pruners or whatever they're using. and they will dip it in our chemistry to sterilize it for that very purpose of biosecurity and not transmission of r you know retarding the transmission of these diseases. And we haven't really talked about that in the B world, but it's certainly equally applicable.

Now I want to be very, very clear. If you can get online, you can get product for plants that we have as well. It is a different It's the chemistry works the same, but it's a different chemistry, and it's intended to leave behind different things. When we do this on plants, we leave behind nutrients that are important for plants, and the chemistry has different constituents that bees would not like.

and vice versa. So they are different in what they leave behind. They're the same and I guess how they operate as oxidants. But I think the biosecurity one is another fascinating area, Jeff, we should talk about because I can only imagine that, yeah, you take it from one AP area to another, not realizing, and we probably have an easy way of doing that with what they're already using to say Hey, you know, put your tool in the in the hive wash before you move on or whatever and make it much easier.

Even within the Ape area. Even within the Ape area. Yeah. So you so you create you created a new product application, Becky.

Becky Masterman
I don't know if I have to pay you a license fee, but this one's on me. And um thank you. I became very a aware because of a talk that I just I just put together for the Midwest Honey bee Expo. And it was on disease transmission and saddest, most disappointing talk I've ever put together because based upon actual research and what we know about transmission when it comes to saying to the beekeepers, here's what you need to do to avoid this.

We just don't have a lot of fat. We don't have enough of that in beekeeping. And so I this you made my day right back at you.

Jeff Ott
Well, this has been really fascinating. And this is went in a completely different direction than I thought it would. In a better direction. So this has been very enlightening.

Thank you so much for bringing the hive wash and the hive health to our listeners' attention. What do you expect in the next six months then? The more rollout of this product and the applicator refinement? Is that what we're expecting?

Jeff Pettis
I've actually just hive washed some different equipment in different ways. And I'll be putting package B's on those and untreated dead outs and watching colony growth. I'll have that answer in two in two months. I also look at honey production, so that's a three month, three or four months.

But uh doing that I'll be in California do repeating this queen study and we'll we'll work with like three to four hundred queens, put them in commercial colonies and follow them for longevity. We'll also send some of those queens to Dave Tarpey and his Queen Clinic to let him let him uh slice and dice them and you know check 'em out for uh you know, e everything he does with them. So that's exciting. And yeah, uh there's just more in the Testing phase that we're working on in that sense.

Jeff Ott
That'll be fun. We just talked to Dave Tarpey and we'll look forward to uh talking to him again Get the inside scoop of what he found with your queen. There you go. There you go.

Yeah. Well, thank you, gentlemen, for coming back and joining us and informing our listeners of what Terra Vera is doing today.

Jeff Pettis
Thank you for having us on.

Jeff Ott
Thank you.

Becky Masterman
Thanks, Jeffrey.

Jeff Ott
Carlos It's great to hear that there's a product on the horizon or actually available to help with as you're pointing out the importance of the help with biosecurity and we don't talk about that enough

Becky Masterman
We don't. And biosecurity is my I'm talking about it a lot in twenty six. After I did that talk for the Midwest Honey bee Expo I just I'm gonna be writing about it and talking about it and so it's very exciting to see another option for managing biosecurity. So but uh what I like so much, I love the science.

And I love the innovation of Teravera. I love the relationship with Jeff Pettis and then and then all they're doing in hopes to help the honey bee industry. I got Just it's an inspiring conversation.

Jeff Ott
So And throughout the episode we kind of jumped around, but if a beekeeper's looking for it, the company's terra But the products are apivera or apivera.

Becky Masterman
The division of teravera is apovera. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's hive health and hive wash.

Yeah. Yep.

Jeff Ott
Well fine. That's fun. Biosecurity, it's important. If you have one yard, you still need to be concerned about it going from hive to hive.

Especially if you have one sick colony.

Becky Masterman
Bees can get disease. from colonies that are a mile away. And so even if you're doing everything, you know, quote unquote right, you are not protected from disease not getting into your colonies. And so It is just something that you need to be aware of and then hopefully we'll have more and more solutions to combat the issues.

And parasites. Parasites travel too.

Jeff Ott
And that about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a 5-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.

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