5 ms·

Lithium chloride kills a honey bee parasite by a systemic mode of action

91 points by curtis 9y ago

mtrpcic 9y ago
This is great news, but I have a few questions that weren't covered in the article: 1. How long-lasting is the effect? How long does the LiCl stay "active"? Will bees need to be fed this at a regular cadence to keep them mite free? 2. Is there any evidence on whether or not the LiCl makes its way into the honey produced by treated bees? LiCl can affect the nervous system (although this is an extremely low quantity). I'm just wondering if there is someone who eats a LOT of honey, could they be impacted (similar to those people who reportedly got mercury poisoning from eating too much fish) I know very little about the biological mechanisms at work here, but those were two thoughts that immediately came to mind.
- xyzzyz 9y ago
  1. How long-lasting is the effect? How long does the LiCl stay "active"? Will bees need to be fed this at a regular cadence to keep them mite free? The paper says that a single feeding achieved good results, though worse than continued feeding spanning a few days. It seems then that a single treatment will only kill mites that are already in the hive, but will not do anything to help develop immunity. Looks like bee keepers will just have to add lithium compounds to the list of treatments they already regularly apply. 2. Is there any evidence on whether or not the LiCl makes its way into the honey produced by treated bees? The paper mentions that it doesn’t accumulate in bees wax, though it says nothing about the honey. They discuss potential toxicity though, and it seems that lithium is not toxic to mammals in concentrations relevant here. Certainly there is no bioaccumulation effect here that makes eating fish somewhat dangerous.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Only doing a single feeding seems like a great way to breed resistance in the mites.
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      Broodless bees don’t need treating for long with most treatments - it’s the brood that’s hard to hit. That said, avoiding resistance is important.
  - zafka 9y ago
    I would guess that a small amount would get in the honey the bees were making at that time, but beekeepers would not harvest that honey. When many flowers are blooming, a second box is added to the hive just for honey( a super). At this time the beekeeper does no additional feeding.
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      Most treatment see the honey supers removed to avoid contamination. There are a few exception which don’t require this, like oxalic acid. When the honey flow starts, you need to add boxes fast - I’m up to 7 and 2 of those have been removed, extracted and put back on.
      - zafka 9y ago
        Where are your bees? I am just getting started in South Florida.
        lostlogin 9y ago
        New Zealand - quite possibly a better bit of the season here!
woliveirajr 9y ago
> From these data, we concluded that LiCl, not RNA knockdown, mediated the observed activity on Varroa mites and that it would be worthwhile to analyse the potential of LiCl as a varroacide. Interesting how correlation doesn't mean causation :).
ohiovr 9y ago
Hopefully this discovery will help solve the colony collapse problem.
IndrekR 9y ago
If this is true in real trials, it is a big thing. Varroa mites have developed resistance to fluvalvinate, which is most commonly used miticide and formic acid is really easy to overdose. Lithium cloride in those quantities is quite safe and low cost. Even more, with short treatment duration (48h at 25mM concentration) one can time the treatment well to reduce LiCl ending up in the honey.
varroa 9y ago
While this is exciting, I can't help but notice- Under the conditions of the common beekeeping practice in non-tropical regions, which are characterized by high colony densities, prevention of swarming and periodical mite control, it seems difficult to achieve a more balanced host-parasite relationship. Thus far, a long-term survival of A. mellifera colonies without any control measures is nearly exclusively reported from feral populations or colonies kept continuously under natural selection pressure Varroa mites have evolved resistance to all available synthetic acaricides In other words, this discovery is just another step following the footsteps of other failing herbicidal & insecticidal campaigns. Doing things nature's way is inconvenient, so we develop chemicals. But eventually, resistance is developed, and then we are in an arms race that will never end. It would be nice to see more attention paid to the well-being of native pollinators, which already take care of themselves in regards to parasites & diseases, but whose numbers have been falling in recent years. Managed honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators, not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/ http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/10/native-bees-are-better-pollinators-honeybees http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/10/native-bees-are-bett...
- pedrocr 9y ago
  >It would be nice to see more attention paid to the well-being of native pollinators, which already take care of themselves in regards to parasites & diseases. There's a second avenue which is the treatment-free solution practiced by some beekeepers. The idea there is to keep the selection pressure and just out-evolve the parasites. Given that managed bees reproduce much more often than natural populations there's a chance it might work and some encouraging results: http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
  - mastax 9y ago
    Thanks for that link, lots of interesting stuff on there. For anyone interested, (one of?) the way that this selection pressure manifests is in grooming behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMSIbeKoFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMSIbeKoFQ The trade-off is less honey production and slower comb building.
lostlogin 9y ago
Broodless bees are worth treating and it provides a great knockdown at a time varroa are vulnerable. But bees aren’t broodless most the time or necessarily any of the time. It’s far harder to treat brood and that’s the key area as it’s where the varroa are.
m3kw9 9y ago
One idea is to engineer micro robots with similar size and use image recognition to find these mites near nests and they go in and kick ass. Like how a few hornets can take care of thousands of bees. This is a future todo
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Not robotic, but a similar hunt/kill strategy is is being tried here with a relative of the scorpion. They coexist with bees and and eat varroa. Plenty of discussion happing among the bee geeks. https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/1465-beekeeping-and-the-pseudoscorpion/ https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/1465-beekeeping-and-the-...

91 points by curtis 9y ago

This is great news, but I have a few questions that weren't covered in the article: 1. How long-lasting is the effect? How long does the LiCl stay "active"? Will bees need to be fed this at a regular cadence to keep them mite free? 2. Is there any evidence on whether or not the LiCl makes its way into the honey produced by treated bees? LiCl can affect the nervous system (although this is an extremely low quantity). I'm just wondering if there is someone who eats a LOT of honey, could they be impacted (similar to those people who reportedly got mercury poisoning from eating too much fish) I know very little about the biological mechanisms at work here, but those were two thoughts that immediately came to mind.

xyzzyz 9y ago
1. How long-lasting is the effect? How long does the LiCl stay "active"? Will bees need to be fed this at a regular cadence to keep them mite free? The paper says that a single feeding achieved good results, though worse than continued feeding spanning a few days. It seems then that a single treatment will only kill mites that are already in the hive, but will not do anything to help develop immunity. Looks like bee keepers will just have to add lithium compounds to the list of treatments they already regularly apply. 2. Is there any evidence on whether or not the LiCl makes its way into the honey produced by treated bees? The paper mentions that it doesn’t accumulate in bees wax, though it says nothing about the honey. They discuss potential toxicity though, and it seems that lithium is not toxic to mammals in concentrations relevant here. Certainly there is no bioaccumulation effect here that makes eating fish somewhat dangerous.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Only doing a single feeding seems like a great way to breed resistance in the mites.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    Broodless bees don’t need treating for long with most treatments - it’s the brood that’s hard to hit. That said, avoiding resistance is important.
- zafka 9y ago
  I would guess that a small amount would get in the honey the bees were making at that time, but beekeepers would not harvest that honey. When many flowers are blooming, a second box is added to the hive just for honey( a super). At this time the beekeeper does no additional feeding.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    Most treatment see the honey supers removed to avoid contamination. There are a few exception which don’t require this, like oxalic acid. When the honey flow starts, you need to add boxes fast - I’m up to 7 and 2 of those have been removed, extracted and put back on.
    - zafka 9y ago
      Where are your bees? I am just getting started in South Florida.
      - lostlogin 9y ago
        New Zealand - quite possibly a better bit of the season here!

woliveirajr 9y ago

> From these data, we concluded that LiCl, not RNA knockdown, mediated the observed activity on Varroa mites and that it would be worthwhile to analyse the potential of LiCl as a varroacide. Interesting how correlation doesn't mean causation :).

ohiovr 9y ago

Hopefully this discovery will help solve the colony collapse problem.

IndrekR 9y ago

If this is true in real trials, it is a big thing. Varroa mites have developed resistance to fluvalvinate, which is most commonly used miticide and formic acid is really easy to overdose. Lithium cloride in those quantities is quite safe and low cost. Even more, with short treatment duration (48h at 25mM concentration) one can time the treatment well to reduce LiCl ending up in the honey.

varroa 9y ago

While this is exciting, I can't help but notice- Under the conditions of the common beekeeping practice in non-tropical regions, which are characterized by high colony densities, prevention of swarming and periodical mite control, it seems difficult to achieve a more balanced host-parasite relationship. Thus far, a long-term survival of A. mellifera colonies without any control measures is nearly exclusively reported from feral populations or colonies kept continuously under natural selection pressure Varroa mites have evolved resistance to all available synthetic acaricides In other words, this discovery is just another step following the footsteps of other failing herbicidal & insecticidal campaigns. Doing things nature's way is inconvenient, so we develop chemicals. But eventually, resistance is developed, and then we are in an arms race that will never end. It would be nice to see more attention paid to the well-being of native pollinators, which already take care of themselves in regards to parasites & diseases, but whose numbers have been falling in recent years. Managed honey bee colonies supplement the work of natural wild pollinators, not the other way around. In a study of 41 different crop systems worldwide, honeybees only increased yield in 14 percent of the crops. Who did all the pollination? Native bees and other insects. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/youre-worrying-wrong-bees/ http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/10/native-bees-are-better-pollinators-honeybees http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/10/native-bees-are-bett...

pedrocr 9y ago
>It would be nice to see more attention paid to the well-being of native pollinators, which already take care of themselves in regards to parasites & diseases. There's a second avenue which is the treatment-free solution practiced by some beekeepers. The idea there is to keep the selection pressure and just out-evolve the parasites. Given that managed bees reproduce much more often than natural populations there's a chance it might work and some encouraging results: http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
- mastax 9y ago
  Thanks for that link, lots of interesting stuff on there. For anyone interested, (one of?) the way that this selection pressure manifests is in grooming behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMSIbeKoFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWMSIbeKoFQ The trade-off is less honey production and slower comb building.

lostlogin 9y ago

Broodless bees are worth treating and it provides a great knockdown at a time varroa are vulnerable. But bees aren’t broodless most the time or necessarily any of the time. It’s far harder to treat brood and that’s the key area as it’s where the varroa are.

m3kw9 9y ago

One idea is to engineer micro robots with similar size and use image recognition to find these mites near nests and they go in and kick ass. Like how a few hornets can take care of thousands of bees. This is a future todo

lostlogin 9y ago
Not robotic, but a similar hunt/kill strategy is is being tried here with a relative of the scorpion. They coexist with bees and and eat varroa. Plenty of discussion happing among the bee geeks. https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/1465-beekeeping-and-the-pseudoscorpion/ https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/1465-beekeeping-and-the-...