Building Better Bee Nutrition and RNAi Tools with with Vincent Ricigliano, PhD (392)

WEBVTT

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Yes, I'm Jerry Gadowskis.

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I'm from McHenry, Illinois, and I'm a beekeeper not only in Illinois but also tied in with Florida

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Welcome to the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

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Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment.

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I'm Jeff Ott.

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And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Today's episode is brought to you

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Thank you, Jerry, for that wonderful opening.

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From Illinois.

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We recorded Cherry at the North American Honey Bee Expo way back in January.

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That was fun.

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And I'm looking forward to twenty-seven.

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Absolutely.

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It would be nice to be back and

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I think I need to bring a trailer.

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Start planning my purchases now.

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Reserve your truck spot in the back of the expo hall.

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I don't know how to drive a truck and trailer, but you know, there's a first time for everything, especially in January.

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Yeah, you got a few months to learn.

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Well, we have some fun news about North American Honey Bee Expo.

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If you've listened to the podcast

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You may have heard our short a couple weeks ago with Kamen Reynolds.

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In that we kind of hid a little bit of information that Becky and I are working on.

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with Cayman.

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Also, it's good timing, right?

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Because we've got a lot coming up in January of twenty seven because

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We each spent a whole year of our lives in twenty five.

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Unless I need to write this down.

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We wrote a book, a beginning beekeeping book, Beekeeping Today

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And that will be released in January of 2027.

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But we also were invited to do a beekeeping short course, a beginning beekeeping short course at the North American Honey Bee Expo

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and organize that.

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So I mean what a great, great expo it's going to be for us.

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Yeah, we're not gonna be resting next January, that's for sure.

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Well and I think

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There goes our December too, because we want to make sure that Wait what?

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Yeah, yeah.

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And November.

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It's such an exciting opportunity to teach beekeeping at an expo where you've got

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the resources that are going to be a room away or within the room or the experts are going to be there too.

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I mean, I am so excited to think about what we're going to figure out in the next six

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months?

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Yeah.

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Wait, how many seven months?

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Maybe six months.

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Six or seven months.

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I can't wait because we already have a great, great outline for it.

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And it's going to be a great beginning beekeeping adventure, I think, for a lot of people.

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So

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And just to pick up on what you're saying, it's the fun thing is going to be that when we talk about a piece of equipment or we talk about a personality or talk about a technique.

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that person more than likely or that technology or that equipment is gonna be around the corner in the expo hall.

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And the beekeepers will be able to go over and take what we've taught them and what we've demonstrated and go see it for themselves and learn.

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I'm thinking, Jeff, beekeeping short course slash scavenger hunt?

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Oh yeah

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That's right.

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You find it, you keep it.

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No, or no, no, no.

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They don't get to keep it they can buy it.

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But even just the opportunities at the honey show to be able to taste honey be

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Because, you know, a lot of beekeeping is about honey production and it's not just one flavor, right?

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So there's just so much that they can learn by

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hands-on or listening to different experts, it's going to be just really a great opportunity for newer beekeepers.

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I'm looking forward to the expo.

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And Becky, I just wanna say that our book is now available for pre-order and we'll provide the link.

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in the show notes if someone is so inclined.

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That is so exciting.

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I think I might pre-order one just because

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That's a good idea.

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That's a good idea.

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Becky, I'm looking forward to our guest today, Dr.

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Vincent Ricigliano, who is a USDA ARS researcher.

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He's got a lot to tell us and I love it when smart people are doing good things for bees.

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He came to our attention for his work on blue green algae and I think that anyone who can tell us about the benefits of blue green algae

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is worth having on the show, so I'm looking forward to Vincent coming on.

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Right after these words from our sponsors.

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Dot com or call one eight hundred six three two three seven nine.

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Betterbee, your partners in Better Beekeeping

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Welcome back everybody.

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Sitting around this great big Beekeeping Today podcast table, we have Dr.

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Vincent Ricigliano sitting down in Davis, California.

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Becky in Minnesota.

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And I'm sitting here in Olympia.

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Vincent, welcome to the show.

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Yeah, thanks a lot for having me.

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We are thrilled that you were able to join us.

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You came highly recommended, so

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We can't wait to have this discussion.

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You came to our attention for your research in nutrition, and honey bee nutrition is getting a lot of press these days in the last several years and its importance

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When I started beekeeping it was just like pollen is about it.

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And that's all we knew about the nutritional needs of honey bees.

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But in the recent history, there's been a lot more discovered.

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So we're looking forward to talking to you

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Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background with bees and then we'll get into the subject a little deeper

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Yeah, sure.

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So well again, thanks for having me.

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I'm a USDA ARS research scientist at the Pollinator Health Lab in Davis, California.

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I've been doing ARSB research for about 11 years now and recently relocated my lab to California from the ARSB lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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Prior to bee research, my training was in plant and microbial biotechnology, and I was involved in a couple of projects dealing with flower symmetry and the genes underlying flower symmetry.

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Of course, flower symmetry determines which pollinators visit these flowers.

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And so I was somewhat interested in pollinator, plant pollinator interactions.

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That's probably where, you know, some of my interest in nutrition came from.

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I saw a job for honey bee microbiome research.

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as I was about to graduate grad school and I just thought it sounded so fascinating.

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There's something about it that I was like, you know, I really want this job.

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And I thought it was kind of a long shot.

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I had never even seen a bee colony before and I thought it was a long shot, but I applied and spoke to my old boss and I just said, look, I don't have experience with bees, but I want to learn

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I have this other experience that I think could translate really well to bee research.

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I got the job and started honey bee research, kinda fell in love with honey bee research.

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Bees is an agricultural system that, you know, interfaces with these other agricultural systems and

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something so important to our food security and just agriculture in general.

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And the rest is kind of history.

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How did you learn about beekeeping?

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My postdoc was at the ARSB lab in Tucson, Arizona.

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And I learned from the staff there, from Mel Boss, Kirk Anderson.

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A lot of the technicians at that bee Lob were really great, Milango Weiss, Brendan Mott.

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So yeah, learned quite a bit from the staff there.

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When we talk about your research, everyone talks of the blue-green algae research that you've done.

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But I know you've done a lot more, but you know, that's kind of like the no one thinks about

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Algae and honey bees.

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And so let's explore then.

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Why algae?

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First, I'd like to say, you know, I'm not just an algae guy, right?

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My work right now.

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My work focuses mainly actually on mites and viruses and nutrition kind of tertiary just because mites and viruses are kind of a major issue right now.

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And in general though, I would say my lab does work to build better feeds.

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But also and most importantly, right now, better tools to help colonies and beekeepers deal with kind of some of the biggest stressors facing honey bees right now.

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Nutrition is an important one though.

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Oh yeah, I'd like to say also we have a new paper that just got published yesterday dealing with RNAI and mites.

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So maybe I could send you that link and

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You could link it in the in the show notes.

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We have so much to talk about.

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Sorry to interrupt you, but let's make sure we're pay making notes.

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So we'll spend the first five minutes on the blue-green algae and then we'll spend the rest of the algae already.

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Vincent is not gonna let us go on unless you go to the blue-green algae.

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Okay, yeah, well no, I am excited to talk about the work with algae.

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It is an interesting one and definitely like catches people's attention because it's so strange, you know, like algae with bees and yeah, so of course like just

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First and foremost, you know, nutrition is very important, of course, right?

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And one of the simplest ways to think about beet nutrition is that they need more than just calories, of course, but they need a balanced diet.

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You know, honey and nectar provide these

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carbohydrates, which fuel the colony energetically, but pollen is where bees get most of their proteins, amino acids, lipids, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and a lot of other compounds tied to immunity and development

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Of course, again, you know, one of the most important things about bee nutrition is that the colony operates or nutrition operates at multiple levels in the colony simultaneously.

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So the superorganism concept of colony nutrition or superorganism concept of the honey bee colony really shines in the context of nutrition.

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You know, you have the colony level.

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the adult worker level, the larval level, and this colony is really a nutritional network.

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So what the colony stores and consumes affects the nurse fees.

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And that affects what the nurse bees can, of course, produce to feed larvae.

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And the quality of those larvae determine the next generation of workers and natural systems.

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Natural ecosystems, bees will consume or and collect pollen from many different sources, but modern agricultural landscapes are often dominated by large monocultures and

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So even when colonies experience periods where they have abundant forage, it might not be nutritionally balanced or complete.

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As we know, beekeepers will feed pollen substitute diets, especially during periods of forage scarcity or before pollination contracts

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And the goal is to usually maintain brood production and keep up colony growth.

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But there's a lot of limitations when it comes to these pollen substitute diets.

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Right, current pollen substitutes can absolutely be useful tools, but many of them were kind of originally designed mostly around their protein content, usually some kind of cheap agricultural byproducts, and you know, we're

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increasingly understanding that pollen is much more than it's much more complex than just protein or even just crude lipids, but like I said, a particular amino acid balance.

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Certain lipids, sterols, micronutrients, antioxidants, and especially fibers that interact with the gut microbiome, which I think is an area that needs more research focus.

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So the challenge then, especially to modern beekeeping, becomes how do we make supplemental diets that function more like real pollen?

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One of the things that kind of led me down this road of researching

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the impact of microalgae or blue green algae on bees was these algae are actually or certain microalgae, especially things like spirulina or chlorella, are very rich and highly bioavailable protein, essential amino acids, lipids, vitamins.

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So a lot of these things

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have nutritional profiles that are surprisingly similar to pollen.

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And the idea isn't that algae might magically replace pollen, but the idea is that algae might help

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us build better supplemental feeds that are closer to pollen than certain ingredients.

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It might even have certain functional properties that could stimulate the bees' immune system and make them more resilient to particular stressors

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Another important thing is the sustainability of algae as a nutrition source, right?

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It could be grown really efficiently on non-arrable land, relatively low water use, and without competing directly with human food consumption

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So from a long-term agricultural standpoint, it's a it's a interesting problem and solution.

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And yeah, like I said, I don't think algae are some kind of silver bullet, but they represent

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an alternative nutrition source that has a nutrition profile that's can be similar to pollen depending on the algae and its production conditions.

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I always like to remind our listeners that

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honey bees are our livestock, but if you look into the livestock industry, the advancement in nutrition was well ahead of where we've been in

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honey bees and people like you, researchers like you are playing ketchup.

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But could you talk a little bit about like other livestock?

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This isn't just new to honey bees, so other livestock are also including

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the blue-green algae and diet supplements too, correct?

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Yeah, that's right.

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Yeah.

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So poultry industry, aquaculture industry are using, you know, a certain percentage of algae.

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And their foods, like I said, it's highly bio bioavailable, rich in all kinds of nutrients besides just macronutrients, but micronutrients.

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And yeah, you're right, you know, other agricultural sectors, other livestock sectors, they've really many of them or most of them have perfected these their supplemental feats.

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Whereas, you know, bee research is pretty is lagging behind both livestock sectors and even companion animals, which we have these complete diets where dogs and cats could eat the same thing for their entire lives.

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and you know live a long, healthy life without disease.

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And so yeah, there's a lot of work to be done in the area of bee nutrition.

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And I think, you know, like I said, picking algae as kind of

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potential nutrition source and exploring it that way is one approach.

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Another approach that my lab has kind of shifted gears to right now is deconstructing pollen, breaking pollen down into its

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constituents and trying to reconstruct it again in an artificial diet and seeing, you know, okay, if we were to remove this fraction from the pollen and

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or these compounds from the pollen and put it into an artificial diet, just those fractions.

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How do bees survive and respond?

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And you know, what are their immune responses look like?

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Well, how long do they live compared to these things?

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And kind of systematically, it says the systematic deconstruction and reconstruction of pollen, I think, is

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what we need to truly replicate it in a in a pollen substitute diet.

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I'm just curious, you're talking about deconstructing pollen, but immediately I was like, oh, so you can get pollen with

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or th the ingredients in pollen, but you don't have the pesticide contamination.

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Does that play a role in the research that you do, the experiments you do, when you're looking at comparing the what the bee health

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with their the artificial diet versus actual pollen supplement, because pollen supplement could also be contaminated with pesticides if it's actually just collected pollen.

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Again, yeah, that's another major issue, right?

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Not only contaminated with pesticides, but you know, perhaps pathogens too.

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So that's a major concern for collected pollen.

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What was the source of that pollen?

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Where were the plants growing?

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Where that pollen was sourced from?

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Were the soils contaminated with heavy metals?

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Is that somehow bioaccumulating in the pollen itself?

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There's yeah, there's a lot of

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A lot of questions about if you could purchase large quantities of cheap pollen and yeah, what is the quality of that pollen?

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What's the amino acid comparison between natural pollen and say the algae and how well it digests?

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It looks really good.

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In fact, the algae seems to be, especially in some of the studies we've done with spirulina and chlorella, the algae is highly, the protein in algae is highly bioavailable to bees

00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:56.800
The amino acid profiles are pretty similar.

00:17:56.800 --> 00:17:59.760
We've we have publications that compare them side by side.

00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:04.400
So they're worth that's worth taking a look at to the listeners.

00:18:04.560 --> 00:18:11.200
The one issue that we've run into with developing some of these algae-based diets is that there's a certain

00:18:11.840 --> 00:18:19.039
limit to how much algae can be in incorporated into the diet before bees become, you know, not as interested in it.

00:18:19.039 --> 00:18:20.799
So it just becomes less palatable.

00:18:20.799 --> 00:18:23.360
The higher the concentration, the less palatable it is.

00:18:23.360 --> 00:18:26.559
And we see that across other animals too.

00:18:25.919 --> 00:18:33.840
So, you know, f some sort of the addition of some sort of feeding stimulant, phago stimulants again, like why is pollen so attractive to bees?

00:18:34.040 --> 00:18:35.560
Is it some volatiles?

00:18:35.560 --> 00:18:37.480
Is it, you know, lipids?

00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:43.640
I think it's probably actually I know that it's a it's kind of a comp a complex combination of all of these things.

00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:46.600
But we've tried we're we're actively trying to isolate

00:18:46.560 --> 00:18:55.120
some of the phago stimulants or feeding stimulants in pollen, and we're finding that they come from a few different classes of molecules.

00:18:55.140 --> 00:18:58.820
Do you know of any anything that you are feeding to them?

00:18:58.820 --> 00:19:06.340
Is there anything that they actually will put into the cells or is it like they do pollen or is it just consumed?

00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:10.960
or removed from the colony because that could be part of it too is where they're storing their groceries.

00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:15.040
And pollen they're just used to putting into the cells so that it's readily available.

00:19:15.040 --> 00:19:16.960
But if you feed 'em a supplement

00:19:17.240 --> 00:19:18.600
Are they storing any of it?

00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:19.400
It depends.

00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:25.800
You know, sometimes we'll see, and it's very obvious when it comes to the algae because their algae patties are green, right?

00:19:25.800 --> 00:19:27.080
So you could kind of see

00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:27.960
Some green.

00:19:27.960 --> 00:19:30.920
Occasionally we'll see it stored in cells, yes.

00:19:30.920 --> 00:19:37.640
I think it's hard to understand like what causes the storage or what stimulates storage versus consumption versus

00:19:38.220 --> 00:19:38.940
you know.

00:19:38.940 --> 00:19:42.060
Your comment about they having their fill of algae.

00:19:42.060 --> 00:19:44.060
I can probably relate to that.

00:19:44.060 --> 00:19:45.980
I would say, okay, that's enough

00:19:45.760 --> 00:19:46.799
That's enough algae.

00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:49.919
Yeah, there comes a point where it's just not as attractive anymore.

00:19:49.919 --> 00:19:51.760
So it's like finding a finding that balance.

00:19:51.760 --> 00:19:58.080
But the thing is, they don't need to consume as much algae because the protein is so bioavailable.

00:19:57.740 --> 00:20:06.620
that you could see in our summer some of our publications that bees will consume significantly less of algae or significantly less of anything compared to natural pollen.

00:20:06.660 --> 00:20:18.660
Yet when compared to when comparing beasts that have consumed pollen versus algae, they could consume less than half as much and still build up the same nutritional stores in their bodies.

00:20:18.460 --> 00:20:27.660
I guess an important benefit of this algae platform too goes beyond nutrition because once we once we started looking at algae as kind of a nutritional platform

00:20:27.740 --> 00:20:32.460
the next obvious question was could algae do more than just provide nutrition?

00:20:32.460 --> 00:20:37.740
So now we could kind of shift gears a little bit to RNAI or RNA interference.

00:20:37.760 --> 00:20:46.880
Since we're switching topics or segueing away, let's take this opportunity for a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and we'll be right back after these words.

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00:22:19.920 --> 00:22:21.760
Welcome back, everybody.

00:22:21.760 --> 00:22:28.560
Okay, Vincent, as promised, let's talk about some of your newest work, the RNAI technology.

00:22:28.440 --> 00:22:35.639
When we started looking at algae as a nutritional platform, the next obvious question was, you know, can this algae do more than just provide nutrition, right?

00:22:35.639 --> 00:22:40.120
And this brings us to the concept of functional feeds and functional foods.

00:22:39.860 --> 00:22:40.179
Right.

00:22:40.179 --> 00:22:52.580
So in human nutrition and even other livestock nutrition, foods that kind of provide some sort of benefit to the organism beyond just their macro and micro micronutrient profiles

00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:58.480
So, for instance, algae can be engineered to produce things like double-stranded RNA.

00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:04.160
And this is what kind of led us into this area of RNA interference or RNAI.

00:23:03.900 --> 00:23:13.500
And RNAI is a natural biological process where RNA molecules can specifically suppress the expression of target genes in the organism.

00:23:13.500 --> 00:23:16.060
So in simple terms, it's a way to

00:23:16.340 --> 00:23:21.460
biologically target very specific genes or pathogens or pests.

00:23:21.460 --> 00:23:26.500
So one of the major viral problems in honey bees is to form wing virus or DWV.

00:23:26.200 --> 00:23:32.760
And it's become especially damaging because mites very efficiently transmit it and amplify the virus throughout colonies.

00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:38.679
So we started exploring whether engineered algae could act as both a nutritional feed ingredient.

00:23:38.660 --> 00:23:44.500
and delivery platform for antiviral RNA molecules targeting DWV.

00:23:44.500 --> 00:23:51.460
One of the major challenges with RNAI technologies is deliverability or is delivery and scalability.

00:23:51.160 --> 00:23:57.400
so how do you economically deliver these molecules to thousands of bee colonies?

00:23:57.400 --> 00:23:59.880
And one way that's possible is algae.

00:23:59.880 --> 00:24:04.520
As I mentioned before, the growth of algae is very scalable, very sustainable.

00:24:04.340 --> 00:24:10.660
And bees can potentially consume the algae bees can consume this algae biomass directly.

00:24:10.660 --> 00:24:17.539
So instead of producing, say, purified pharmaceutical style double-stranded RNA, the algae itself

00:24:17.740 --> 00:24:27.340
can function as the feed and the delivery vehicle for these antiviral RNAs to honey bees and honey bee colonies.

00:24:27.340 --> 00:24:32.220
So it's still an area of active research, but the early proof of concept

00:24:32.419 --> 00:24:34.419
is out there and published.

00:24:34.419 --> 00:24:40.900
And we have a patent application and we're trying and a commercial partner who's interested in commercializing it.

00:24:40.900 --> 00:24:45.220
And so we're just trying to understand a bit more about how this could be regulated and

00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:47.760
What other viruses can we target with it?

00:24:47.760 --> 00:24:53.200
But in general, in this publication that's currently out there, I think it was 2000

00:24:53.240 --> 00:25:04.280
24 bees fed these algae-based diets pr that produced the antiviral RNAs, they showed reduced virus levels and improved survival following a virus challenge.

00:25:04.280 --> 00:25:05.640
So bees were

00:25:06.040 --> 00:25:14.040
Fed these special algae diets that were engineered to as essentially edible antiviral treatments.

00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:24.800
And then they were injected with deformed wing virus to stimulate to simulate the natural transmission mechanism of deformed wing virus through varroa mites.

00:25:24.720 --> 00:25:30.720
And yeah, bees that were fed it had reduced virus levels and lived significantly longer.

00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:32.800
And that's just so critical because if

00:25:33.060 --> 00:25:43.140
Beekeepers from the way back remember when Varroa first came to the United States, the n number or percent infestation that the bees could handle

00:25:43.519 --> 00:25:49.760
was so high compared to the number they can handle now because of the viruses.

00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:51.760
And so taking a

00:25:51.419 --> 00:25:58.940
mitigating some of the viral activity could be a game changer for I haven't the amount of control you have to do for your Varroa

00:25:59.400 --> 00:26:06.920
Because it varroa are bad, but it's the viruses that are just really rapidly escalating the viral problem

00:26:07.140 --> 00:26:07.700
Yeah.

00:26:08.260 --> 00:26:18.100
I want to emphasize, of course, again, there's no silver bullet in beekeeping and nutrition alone won't solve a lot of these issues and RNA alone won't solve a lot of these issues, but

00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:26.400
improving nutrition and developing better disease management tools like this, you know, engineered algae proof of concept that we have shows that, you know

00:26:26.919 --> 00:26:33.160
these newer management tools developed through biotechnology can work together as part of an integrated approach.

00:26:33.160 --> 00:26:36.679
In these trials it's delivered as a feed or as a patty?

00:26:36.679 --> 00:26:37.559
As a feed, yeah.

00:26:37.559 --> 00:26:39.480
So as a sugar caddy.

00:26:39.340 --> 00:26:44.059
Are they as pretty as the ones that you shared with me a couple of years ago?

00:26:44.059 --> 00:26:45.179
They're really pretty panties.

00:26:45.660 --> 00:26:48.620
Yeah, you know, the engineered algae, of course, we weren't

00:26:48.760 --> 00:26:51.160
We haven't been able to deploy this in the field yet.

00:26:51.160 --> 00:26:52.120
In the lab, yeah.

00:26:52.120 --> 00:26:54.120
It looks very similar in color.

00:26:54.120 --> 00:26:56.440
These kind of blue green.

00:26:57.840 --> 00:27:00.480
How else is this being used to improve honey bee health?

00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:08.480
Yeah, we're exploring it to target other viruses and even other viruses simultaneously, and we're also using it to target varroa.

00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:08.799
So

00:27:09.040 --> 00:27:17.840
You guys and your listeners are probably aware of the first commercial RAI product on the market right now for control of varroa.

00:27:18.040 --> 00:27:24.920
That product is essentially a purified RNA molecule that targets through reproduction.

00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:28.200
This algae platform is just another means of

00:27:28.540 --> 00:27:33.100
producing and delivering double-stranded RNA to honey bee colonies.

00:27:33.100 --> 00:27:35.900
And I wouldn't say it's directly comparable.

00:27:35.900 --> 00:27:39.900
It's just another tool in the toolbox that's pretty early in its development

00:27:39.860 --> 00:27:50.899
But again represents an interesting concept that like what if the food itself can produce be the source of producing this and could that eventually be cheaper and more sustainable way of

00:27:51.160 --> 00:27:53.000
of producing double stranded RNA.

00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:59.320
Like right now, the algae can't produce nearly as much double stranded RNA as, you know, some of these

00:27:59.760 --> 00:28:07.520
Some of these companies are able to produce, but what it can do is produce double stranded RNA cheaply on a large scale

00:28:07.980 --> 00:28:12.060
Using just light and nutrient salts and water.

00:28:12.220 --> 00:28:18.060
The RNAI technology, is this still based on with the algae or is this separate from the algae?

00:28:17.860 --> 00:28:20.740
So RNAI is kind of like a core competency of my lab, right?

00:28:20.740 --> 00:28:25.139
And we are exploring a few different ways to produce the double-stranded RNA.

00:28:25.380 --> 00:28:31.299
The double-stranded RNA is like the effector molecule that induces the RNAI response

00:28:31.160 --> 00:28:33.160
And there's a lot of different ways you can produce it.

00:28:33.160 --> 00:28:41.480
You could produce it on a large scale using something called in vitro RNA synthesis, where essentially like these double-stranded RNAs are produced and

00:28:41.840 --> 00:28:46.799
test tubes or large vats without the use of a living organism to produce them.

00:28:46.799 --> 00:28:54.000
And an alternative approach is what we're one of the things we're doing in my lab is producing them inside of a living system.

00:28:53.860 --> 00:28:58.019
It just so happens that this living system that we're producing them in is also edible.

00:28:58.019 --> 00:29:02.179
So it doesn't require the double-stranded RNAs don't require purification.

00:29:02.179 --> 00:29:07.380
They can be grown up on a large scale and fed directly to bees.

00:29:07.360 --> 00:29:18.159
I'm imagining when I'm going back to my ten gallon aquariums growing up and scraping off the algae of the side, is it is like vat size of a thing or is it big monstrous vats?

00:29:17.940 --> 00:29:21.220
Well we've we've experimented with both, right?

00:29:21.220 --> 00:29:25.940
So right now we do a lot of well, we've done a lot of pilot scale stuff, right?

00:29:25.940 --> 00:29:32.659
And the idea is to produce enough to do the experiments, to establish the proof of concept.

00:29:32.519 --> 00:29:40.840
and develop the technology and then hopefully a commercial partner comes in and dedicates an entire facility to the production of this

00:29:41.240 --> 00:29:42.600
the production of this algae.

00:29:42.600 --> 00:29:48.680
So we're working on producing the double-stranded RNAs in Spirulina right now.

00:29:48.680 --> 00:29:52.280
It's the most commercially and industrially important

00:29:52.560 --> 00:29:56.800
blue-green algae, so there's a lot of infrastructure already to produce it.

00:29:56.800 --> 00:30:04.480
It's it's a bit expensive right now to produce compared to other algae, but that's only because it's produced kind of at

00:30:04.919 --> 00:30:11.880
For a at human grade as opposed to say feed grade like most other pollen substitute ingredients.

00:30:11.880 --> 00:30:12.200
So

00:30:12.540 --> 00:30:17.260
Yeah, working on production methods and how to drive the price down.

00:30:17.260 --> 00:30:19.980
Do you have field trials scheduled?

00:30:20.060 --> 00:30:21.180
We're we're working on that.

00:30:21.180 --> 00:30:21.500
Yeah.

00:30:21.500 --> 00:30:25.500
So like I said, we're working with a commercial partner now who's gonna hopefully fund this field trial.

00:30:25.500 --> 00:30:31.660
And we even have a facility that's capable of producing enough material for a field trial.

00:30:31.460 --> 00:30:36.260
But we're still ironing out the details and funding of that.

00:30:36.260 --> 00:30:38.980
Do you have to do this at a certain time of the season?

00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:42.100
Do you does it would it have to be like a spring start to it?

00:30:41.860 --> 00:30:43.779
I guess it depends on the location.

00:30:43.779 --> 00:30:54.659
You know, ideally the feed could be applied during somewhat of a dearth period, when feed whenever feed would typically be applied for the particular operation or

00:30:54.919 --> 00:31:02.679
management goals and we'll ideally be working with a few different commercial beekeepers to test this in the future.

00:31:03.320 --> 00:31:07.400
It'd be interesting to learn when the effective treatment schedule for

00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:16.440
this approach and what is it once a year, is it multiple times a year, how long it remains in effect throughout the colony?

00:31:16.520 --> 00:31:17.880
We've been thinking about that a bit.

00:31:17.880 --> 00:31:22.120
I would think that it would require multiple applications, just because

00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:30.400
you know, the RNAI, according to the literature and the few studies that have applied RNAI to colonies in the field, like

00:31:30.820 --> 00:31:40.100
It persists for some time, but I think we'll probably require multiple applications, I guess depending on oh lots of things, might levels and seasonality and

00:31:40.440 --> 00:31:41.880
management goals.

00:31:41.880 --> 00:31:43.159
So yeah.

00:31:43.159 --> 00:31:46.120
A field trial is a bit is on the horizon.

00:31:46.120 --> 00:31:52.279
We're still, like I said, trying to dial in some important considerations for that.

00:31:52.519 --> 00:31:55.159
Most important consideration being money.

00:31:54.620 --> 00:32:03.180
we have companies trying to you know secure venture capital and yeah to fund this all.

00:32:03.180 --> 00:32:06.780
In the meantime though, where it's a bit more difficult to

00:32:07.080 --> 00:32:14.280
you know, pull off a field trial of this because it requires, you know, a dedicated facility to produce large enough quantities for a field trial.

00:32:14.280 --> 00:32:15.560
We also work with

00:32:15.940 --> 00:32:18.740
RNAI that doesn't require algae.

00:32:18.740 --> 00:32:25.700
So we work with something called naked double-stranded RNA, which is just purified double-stranded RNA, and we use it for

00:32:25.940 --> 00:32:31.940
different applications, including antiviral applications and including mite applications.

00:32:31.940 --> 00:32:35.139
So as you and the listeners know, there's a

00:32:35.800 --> 00:32:44.440
commercially available mite treatment right now that uses that relies on RNAI and we are testing different

00:32:44.919 --> 00:32:54.120
targets in mites, specifically targets that are lethal that could either just directly kill the mite, but we're also interested in using RNAI to

00:32:54.440 --> 00:33:02.279
better understand and potentially mitigate resistance to certain mitocides like amitraz.

00:33:02.279 --> 00:33:06.760
So we know that amitraz resistance is a is a major issue right now.

00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:21.040
In fact, it was shown to have a significant presence, or at least genotypes for resistant mites were pretty prevalent in recent colony surveys of collapsing colonies over the last couple of years.

00:33:20.840 --> 00:33:29.000
One way we're using RNAI is to what if we could turn off genes in the mite that make them resistant to certain mitocides?

00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:35.559
And by doing this, we could extend the effective life of those mitocides.

00:33:35.140 --> 00:33:36.660
for the beekeeping industry.

00:33:36.820 --> 00:33:41.380
So we're kind of using RNAI tools in different ways.

00:33:41.380 --> 00:33:47.860
This way I just described to kind of understand and mitigate mitocide resistance is more of like a stopgap measure

00:33:47.660 --> 00:33:58.620
You know, instead of registering new mitocides, which can take a long time, perhaps a synergist like the one I'm describing can just extend

00:33:59.179 --> 00:34:08.139
the life and usability of mitocides like amitraz until we could develop totally chemical-free approaches

00:34:08.520 --> 00:34:12.359
perhaps rely on RNAI that could just directly kill mites.

00:34:12.760 --> 00:34:13.879
I need a map here.

00:34:13.879 --> 00:34:15.879
So you're doing molecular work.

00:34:15.879 --> 00:34:18.440
You're doing nutrition work including

00:34:18.920 --> 00:34:21.080
growing the organism.

00:34:21.080 --> 00:34:26.040
Are you farming out the viral analysis of the virus data?

00:34:26.040 --> 00:34:28.120
Are you is another lab doing that?

00:34:28.080 --> 00:34:28.879
Where are you doing that too?

00:34:29.040 --> 00:34:34.320
Oh no, we do all the yeah, we do all our molecular data and virus analysis in house.

00:34:34.639 --> 00:34:35.440
You do.

00:34:35.440 --> 00:34:35.760
So

00:34:35.980 --> 00:34:38.059
I think we wanted to review that, Vincent.

00:34:38.059 --> 00:34:38.700
Yeah.

00:34:38.859 --> 00:34:40.460
We'll be we'll be down next week.

00:34:40.460 --> 00:34:41.740
What are you doing?

00:34:41.819 --> 00:34:43.819
Come on come on over anytime, really.

00:34:43.819 --> 00:34:44.940
you guys are welcome.

00:34:45.260 --> 00:34:47.020
We might have to sign some stuff and

00:34:48.220 --> 00:34:50.460
But it's a lot for one lab to do.

00:34:50.460 --> 00:34:52.299
I mean that's we do a lot.

00:34:52.299 --> 00:34:53.339
Yeah, you do, right?

00:34:53.339 --> 00:34:55.260
I'm I'm right, right?

00:34:55.659 --> 00:34:59.180
We're we're we're busy, you know, but I have to say over the last

00:34:59.520 --> 00:35:01.680
year or so, especially since relocating.

00:35:01.680 --> 00:35:05.440
it's been a little difficult to hire people right now.

00:35:05.440 --> 00:35:08.960
You know, we've kind of honed our focus a bit and the nutrition work is

00:35:09.260 --> 00:35:13.660
taken a bit of a back seat as I wait for new postdocs to join the lab.

00:35:13.660 --> 00:35:17.740
And, you know, we tried to just hone our focus on just mites and viruses at the moment.

00:35:17.740 --> 00:35:19.820
And I'm eager to get back to nutrition.

00:35:19.660 --> 00:35:27.340
But you know, our the beekeepers, our stakeholders, they want solutions to mites and viruses, and they want those solutions

00:35:27.740 --> 00:35:28.460
Yesterday.

00:35:28.460 --> 00:35:28.940
Years ago.

00:35:29.260 --> 00:35:30.140
Forty years ago.

00:35:30.700 --> 00:35:31.260
Yeah.

00:35:31.340 --> 00:35:34.780
Are you also managing your own your own colonies?

00:35:34.780 --> 00:35:36.300
Are you are you getting the

00:35:36.640 --> 00:35:38.400
The bees from your own APR?

00:35:38.640 --> 00:35:38.880
Okay.

00:35:38.880 --> 00:35:39.359
Wow.

00:35:39.359 --> 00:35:41.920
Yeah, so and we work with commercial beekeepers too.

00:35:41.920 --> 00:35:47.760
So we're very fortunate, of course, being in Davis and in the Central Valley, kind of the epicenter of

00:35:48.040 --> 00:35:50.760
you know, pollination in the US.

00:35:50.760 --> 00:35:55.800
We're fortunate to work with some very cooperative commercial beekeepers

00:35:55.740 --> 00:36:00.460
We really like the idea of testing our treatments in their bees, right?

00:36:00.460 --> 00:36:03.420
These bees have kind of been exposed to commercial

00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:06.080
conditions, commercial management.

00:36:06.080 --> 00:36:08.560
It's it's nice to be able to test treatments.

00:36:08.560 --> 00:36:16.000
And if they work, then well that's we're already kind of where the rubber hits the road, we're already testing these treatments in commercial

00:36:16.460 --> 00:36:17.980
commercially managed bees.

00:36:17.980 --> 00:36:23.900
So yes, we do maintain some of our own colonies, but we also work closely with commercial beekeepers.

00:36:23.900 --> 00:36:27.500
Yeah, you are in a great location to have access to.

00:36:27.340 --> 00:36:31.580
Very cooperative and very friendly beekeepers who have the resource to help you out.

00:36:31.580 --> 00:36:32.700
That's fantastic.

00:36:32.700 --> 00:36:38.460
Yeah, there's no shortage of bee colonies and there's no shortage of mites or viruses here in California.

00:36:38.460 --> 00:36:38.780
So

00:36:38.680 --> 00:36:38.920
Yes.

00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:40.520
If you run out, like let me know.

00:36:40.520 --> 00:36:43.800
There's a lot I can I can give you several colonies here.

00:36:44.440 --> 00:36:49.640
I was just gonna mention that Vincent has also worked with Randy Oliver and published with him.

00:36:49.640 --> 00:36:51.080
So it's kind of fun.

00:36:51.080 --> 00:36:52.120
They've partnered.

00:36:52.980 --> 00:37:00.500
Yeah, Randy does live somewhat close by and see him pretty regularly and so is a great resource.

00:37:00.500 --> 00:37:00.660


00:37:01.040 --> 00:37:02.800
Good to chat with Randy.

00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:05.040
In fact, it reminds me I should probably give him a call.

00:37:05.120 --> 00:37:08.480
Those have to be intense chats, Vincent.

00:37:09.120 --> 00:37:11.280
They're not just a chat, are they?

00:37:11.500 --> 00:37:13.260
It's never no it's never just a chat.

00:37:15.420 --> 00:37:15.740
Absolutely.

00:37:15.900 --> 00:37:18.220
Oh absolutely a hundred percent.

00:37:18.300 --> 00:37:19.420
Well, Dr.

00:37:19.420 --> 00:37:20.140
Vincent

00:37:22.020 --> 00:37:24.180
We really appreciate talking to you today.

00:37:24.579 --> 00:37:26.260
We're coming up the end of the hour.

00:37:26.260 --> 00:37:28.740
Is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven't?

00:37:28.740 --> 00:37:32.980
Or can you give us a little peek at the next discussion we have with you?

00:37:32.740 --> 00:37:33.700
down the road.

00:37:33.700 --> 00:37:37.060
Yeah, how about how about a peek at the next discussion down the road?

00:37:37.060 --> 00:37:38.900
so fantastic.

00:37:38.900 --> 00:37:41.780
We have a review article published just last year.

00:37:41.780 --> 00:37:45.700
It's called Harnessing Biotechnology for Bee Pollinator Health.

00:37:45.080 --> 00:37:56.040
Rina, we essentially lay out a roadmap for how we can use modern biotechnology, modern molecular biology, genomics to develop better, smarter tools.

00:37:56.020 --> 00:38:03.940
to help bees deal with some of the help bees deal with some of the biggest modern stressors that they're dealing with in ways that

00:38:04.140 --> 00:38:10.059
don't necessarily rely on chemical inputs and hopefully are a bit cleaner and more sustainable.

00:38:10.059 --> 00:38:16.619
Yeah, tools towards more sustainable beekeeping that ensure that beekeeping has a future

00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:21.400
Well we really enjoyed it's I can't believe how quickly this time has passed.

00:38:21.400 --> 00:38:23.240
We look forward to having you back.

00:38:23.240 --> 00:38:26.440
Boy, even a possible future tour that'll have there in Davis.

00:38:26.440 --> 00:38:28.040
See how I invited us?

00:38:28.040 --> 00:38:29.480
Yeah, that's fantastic.

00:38:31.600 --> 00:38:32.400
Yeah.

00:38:32.480 --> 00:38:33.920
We look forward to having you back.

00:38:33.920 --> 00:38:34.800
Talk to you soon.

00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:36.640
Thanks a lot for having me.

00:38:37.120 --> 00:38:38.560
That was really fun.

00:38:38.800 --> 00:38:39.680
Who knew?

00:38:39.680 --> 00:38:40.560
Well, we knew.

00:38:40.560 --> 00:38:42.000
We have sponsors, but

00:38:42.160 --> 00:38:42.640
Who knew?

00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:49.520
Blue-green algae is so important and is so useful for the honey bees and not only as feet and as a carrier.

00:38:50.640 --> 00:38:50.960
Right.

00:38:55.620 --> 00:38:57.460
is to get rid of the vectors.

00:38:57.460 --> 00:39:00.420
But how exciting if they've found another great way.

00:39:00.420 --> 00:39:01.940
So that's exciting.

00:39:01.940 --> 00:39:09.700
And I will say we were I was talking to Vera from Strong Microbials, speaking of sponsors, at

00:39:10.200 --> 00:39:17.640
the was it the Bee Expo, the North American or the was it the Midwest mid was it the Midwest Bee Honey Bee Expo and

00:39:18.140 --> 00:39:22.059
Vera told me, she said, Yeah, I have to have Vincent on the show.

00:39:22.059 --> 00:39:23.740
He's he's so smart.

00:39:23.740 --> 00:39:26.299
He's doing such great work and boy

00:39:26.460 --> 00:39:27.740
She was spot on.

00:39:27.740 --> 00:39:29.100
So thank you, Vera.

00:39:29.100 --> 00:39:30.220
Thank you, thank you.

00:39:30.220 --> 00:39:30.940
I learned a lot.

00:39:31.020 --> 00:39:37.820
I look forward to having Vincent back in the in the research they're doing down there at the USDA- ARS lab in at Davis, California.

00:39:37.799 --> 00:39:48.760
It's gonna be so important to our ongoing health of our honey bees, especially as ne pollen issues and habitat issues and pest and pestilence disease.

00:39:48.760 --> 00:39:49.559
But you know

00:39:50.800 --> 00:40:00.480
But you know, that I love I love how this they kept putting it into context and as far as this is what the stakeholders need, this is what beekeepers need.

00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:00.960
They

00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:07.680
they need solutions and there are long-term solutions, there are short-term solutions that might be really helpful.

00:40:07.680 --> 00:40:11.520
And so how lucky are we that he went from

00:40:11.859 --> 00:40:13.859
Was it floral symmetry?

00:40:13.859 --> 00:40:20.660
And he floral symmetry he ended up in the world of bees, beekeeping, blue algae, bee health.

00:40:20.820 --> 00:40:21.460
I mean, yeah.

00:40:21.460 --> 00:40:22.740
We're lu we're lucky.

00:40:22.740 --> 00:40:23.060
So

00:40:23.240 --> 00:40:26.440
That was like a good catch for the bee industry.

00:40:26.440 --> 00:40:31.880
Good on the USDA for hiring him as a postdoc and then keeping him on.

00:40:32.299 --> 00:40:36.460
And that about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today.

00:40:36.460 --> 00:40:41.500
Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts.

00:40:41.640 --> 00:40:43.960
or wherever you stream the show.

00:40:43.960 --> 00:40:49.000
Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy.

00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:55.160
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00:40:55.160 --> 00:40:56.119
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00:40:56.640 --> 00:41:00.319
B, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast.

00:41:00.319 --> 00:41:09.680
We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode.

00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:11.279
And most importantly, thank you for the next video.

00:41:11.799 --> 00:41:13.559
for listening and spending time with us.

00:41:13.559 --> 00:41:17.960
If you have any questions or feedback, just head over to our website and drop us a note.

00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:19.319
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00:41:19.319 --> 00:41:21.000
Thanks again everybody