May I have your attention please? The following is not the real Jeff Vox really. If you are creating an IPM plan for your family, you might be a beekeeper. If you can name at least three subspecies of apis malifera, you might be a beekeeper. If you know what time of year your grocery store puts sugar on sale, you might be a beekeeper. Welcome, welcome to Bee Love Beekeeping Podcast presented by our good friends over at Man Lake.
At Bee Love, we're all about honeybees and of course the beekeepers. And if you're on the beekeeping adventure, we would love to hear from you. If you're just thinking about it, this is a great place to learn from real life beekeepers. Bees beekeepers and fun beekeeping stories, it's all about the love. On today's show, we're going to hear all about the bee vaccine from the folks over at Dallin Animal Health. But first, I'm in the mood for something I wouldn't call it crazy.
I'd call it, maybe painful. This is sent in from Lauren. She says, late last winter, I thought a hive was dead, so I just put on a bee jacket and gloves to bring the equipment in. I couldn't get the cover off, so I was banging it around trying to pop it off. I finally did and when I looked, there were thousands of live bees all turning and staring at me and Unison. Then they decided they weren't happy with me and they attacked. I walked away or maybe ran away with hundreds of them following me.
I stripped naked on the patio since I couldn't get them off my clothes and then hightailed it indoors. Took about 20 stings on my thighs. Luckily, she says she was wearing a bee jacket and knee-high wellies. And here's one more from Birdie. She says, my husband was on the ladder and I was holding it in place so that he could take down the full swarm box. He accidentally hit the top lid.
It flipped onto the ground, but at the same time, he tipped the box and dumped all of the bees all over my head. Yes, my hair was completely full of bees buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, but congratulations Birdie. She says not one sting. Way to go. With those two stories behind us, let's get right to the interview. All right, I am really happy to have with me today two special guests. Two for the price of one, by the way. Phoebe Snyder and Everett Hendrickson from Dallin Animal Health.
Did I get all that right? Yes. I'm going to give you each 30 seconds to tell us something about you and your love of bees. And then I want to jump into the science of what you guys do. So Phoebe, you go first. Sounds good. My name is Phoebe. I've been a beekeeper for 10 years. Got into bee research pretty early on and did an internship at the USDA. Did my masters on hygienic behavior at UNC Greensboro. Jumped around to some companies, I guess. Okay, we're going to start editing now.
So I'm more on the research side. I'm just going to mention we had Cayman Reynolds on the show recently. He's the one that recommended you to. He said that you are so well-spoken and you know everything about this. So, now you have high standards to live up to. All right, Everett. I got a cut Cayman to check apparently. So there you go. So my name is Everett and I've been in agriculture for almost 30 years. I cut my teeth into made a production in the South Florida.
Eventually worked my way into crop and veg production in general and different products that went into that, especially organically. I wound up in a position as a field tech for bee vectoring technologies out of Canada. They had a product that was a bio fungicide that the bees could carry to the bloom to protect the bloom and prevent other fungicides being sprayed during bloom time in different crops, different varieties, different diseases. That's my introduction in the bees.
And so I worked in blueberry fields and sunflower fields and almonds and different fields there related to that. And so when down as they've been developing this on the sidelines, I was watching it and became interested last year, year before last, I should say. And here I am working as their spokesperson trying to translate the science to the practical. Okay, I'm going to do this a little bit ADD style today and jump all over the place. Do honey bees pollinate tomatoes? Not really, sometimes.
I didn't think so, but I wanted to double check. They will. Indoor tomatoes will need pollination from time to time. And they typically use bumblebees that are commercially reared, not honey bees. Honey bees tend to like the top of the greenhouse too much. So and not get to the flower. Peebee's nodding her head. You're an expert on it. Yeah, not that I'm not that I've got the same type of experiences as Everett, but yeah, I've heard heard the same thing. I want to jump into what Dallin does.
You know, some people are probably completely up to speed on this topic already. And if so, go ahead and fast forward. But I don't know a lot about the bee vaccine that you guys have come out with, but I've seen it in headlines here and there for the last year or so. And so I want to learn everything there is to know about it and please not from a scientific standpoint. Use layman's or lame women's terms.
First of all, how does someone get the idea of I'm going to vaccinate a bee and where do you get a needle that small? Peebee, you don't mind. I'll start on this one and then you can correct me while I'm at it wrong. But Dallin and where at in the stream of agricultural landscape is that some researchers Helsinki and other places found some quite interesting developments with invertebrate and immunology and using dead bacteria to trigger an immune response and invertebrates.
And so fast forward to today, one of the first invertebrates or, you know, the largest invertebrate that is commercially used in agricultural respects is the honeybee. And it's responsible for a third of the food supply chain. So it fit right up the alley with the values that the founders of Dallin had in that they're here for a healthy animals, healthy planet. That's their motto.
And so saving not necessarily saving the bee, but supporting the bee and supporting commercial beekeepers into growing their apiaries instead of, you know, adding more challenges to it. The process itself is very quite simple. And we call it a vaccine from a regulatory perspective. That's what we're required to do. It's just dead bacteria and an aqueous solution.
So in that respect, it's there's nothing, you know, we're not engineering, reengineering DNA or RNA or any of that stuff is kind of old school, like the old school polio vaccines. If you could draw a parallel, but in an invertebrate body, which is completely different immune system than a human or a mammal. So getting to market was something that could help prevent diseases, not only here in the United States and Canada, but across the world.
These diseases are ubiquitous with all honeybees around the globe. So and in different scales. It was exciting to hear about and excited to learn about. And we are still in our infancy as a company. We're only seven years old. We're moving forward into the next generation of what we're going to be offering to beekeepers and other invertebrates.
But in general, that's where the technology came from was a research lab and some bright minds got together and learned how to turn that research into something that could be profitable to the commercial market. Maybe. Yeah, and maybe if I can add a little bit more on without getting too sciencey and boring with it on kind of on the mechanism. I just think it's it's so fascinating. So basically what whatever it was saying with with the heat killed bacteria.
So nurses can consume this this heat killed bacteria, the vaccine in a candy and feed it to adult Queens. And then that is synthesized basically the botilogenin, which is an egg yolk precursor protein, which helps basically with development of their offspring. So the certain molecular markers on the vaccine combined to the tillogenin. And so when the queen lays her eggs, that the tillogenin goes to her offspring and essentially they are primed against certain diseases.
So American fowl brood is kind of the first one. We discovered that bees are bees can be more resistant towards after being vaccinated. And now as our field research is opening up and we have our lab based in Athens that is doing a lot of the lab work actually taking taking brood into the lab and doing these exposure experiments to measure how resistant they are. So it's really exciting. We're starting to see some protection maybe towards other diseases as well.
So the platform technology of this vaccine, transgenerational immune priming, which is a mouthful just to say that from one generation to the next, what the queen experiences by being vaccinated and passing that immune priming down to her offspring really opens up the door for what I think, you know, we're coming into the future of be health solutions and it's really exciting. Okay, let me make sure I get it, because I don't know if phylogenics and stuff like that are.
But one of the things I read in one of your white papers was the term inherited immunity. So the way I understand it, you tell me if this is right. You, you feed this. Did you say dead bacteria? Yes. This dead bacteria also known as a vaccine to nurse bees, who then put it in royal jelly to raise Queens. Is that right? Correct.
Okay. Then those Queens have a bit of that immunity that they're passing down through all of the eggs they lay the hundreds of thousands or millions, however many eggs they lay throughout their lifetime. Right. Okay. Wow, I'm pretty proud of myself. Very cool. And I'm proud of you too, because it took me months to get to synthesize it like you just did.
But the cool part of it is when we look at it, we put tracers on these bacteria and the particles to trace it through the nurse bees into the royal jelly into the Queens and the fat bodies and all the things that Phoebe was mentioning there. And you see it going directly in the ovaries. And that's where the trigger point is. And so that is, I mean, that's from a practical standpoint. That's just awesome to see that that is the path that we are using and it is going along that path.
Now, I had read that this is for deformed wing virus, but you also mentioned American Foul Brood. So where are we at on both of those? The licenses for American Foul Brood and it's a conditional license. We can't make claims that we can't support. There is data suggesting, strongly suggesting, and it's been replicated now that the deformed wing virus is seeing suppression from the use of AFB vaccine.
So those numbers are very, as you've probably seen in the white papers that were given to you, very impact, a big impact. Like 87% or something like that. What about AFB? Is there any data on that yet? The AFB data we have, it's so far, it's been 100% effective, but in the field, AFB in the United States is not tremendously, you know, the spread of it is not huge right now. It used to be a really big problem 30 years ago. How about European Foul Brood?
In the European Foul Brood, we're looking at it, we both have a vaccine in the pipeline that addresses AFB, but we're also looking at cross protection of the current AFB to see if it exists. And so we're, we keep waiting on that. We've had a few field trials go south, do the hurricanes and other challenges. So until we get some strong data, either telling us it's not or is cross protecting, you know, we hedge our bets on that one right now. So Phoebe, I'm going to ask you this question.
Do you guys see on the horizon a time when all queen bees are vaccinated for nearly everything out there, you know, multiple different things from a vaccine? I think that would certainly be interesting. And yeah, I hope that's kind of where we're heading once we've now that we've kind of figured out the pathway that this type of technology is is operating on it really opens up the door for other possibilities for for other diseases.
But you have to keep in mind too that the sort of the pathology of say from chalk brood to deform wing virus acute bee paralysis virus, they're all very different. And so that's kind of why we don't see what we're starting to kind of peel back the layers of, okay, if we hit them with this American fowl brood vaccine, what else, you know, how else is this impacting other diseases just based on general immune up regulation.
But I think as we delve more into how all these different diseases work, the technology might have to to change to accommodate that. So we'll have to see but yeah, this is definitely a big step in that in that direction. Let me just take a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. I've been asked, does Man Lake provide equipment for commercial beekeepers? Yes. Do they provide equipment for side liners? Yes. How about beginners? Of course. Protective gear? Yes.
Queens, nukes and packages? Yes. Processing equipment? Yes, yes, and yes. There is a reason that Man Lake is the number one supplier for thousands and thousands of beekeepers. In fact, I could give you a hundred reasons to try them, but let's start with just 10. As in $10 off your first $100 purchase with the discount code MLBLOV10. Don't worry, it's all in the show notes. Seriously, you'll be happy you gave Man Lake a try. And now back to the guest. Just a brief point to add to that.
You know, to say that we'll have a vaccine for every bacteria or viral that affects the hive might not be necessary. In that by up regulating the immune system and their socially hygienic animals to begin with, that by giving them a leg up or a wing up, let's say, by giving them a wing up. They have legs too. On their immunity and hive health, they may be managing other diseases just fine if they get a head start. And so they don't need a vaccine for those things, perhaps.
So it's not as if we're looking to vaccinate against every living thing that could harm a hive, but we want to make sure that we're doing the right thing for the ecology of the field and native pollinators as well. So in my experience with nearly any kind of medication, I'm talking about people now, medication or vaccines, there's always some kind of side effect. What kind of side effects have you found are going on with this? So far, none.
And that's that's something that Dalio Freitag has looked at in a lot of her talks. She and in sort of in the literature suggests that in other model organisms, there could be longer development times into adulthood and things like that. But what Dalio has said and sort of what we've seen too is that there are no adverse side effects that we've seen. And this vaccine now in the field has been tested in Everett, correct me here, I believe 60,000 hives. Is that right?
We'll say thousands of hives and no side effects. Wow. Like Phoebe said, now, you know, I mentioned earlier, this is a conditional license because we do need to look at side effects and we do need to see where is the unintended consequence.
And we're, you know, we've been given enough bandwidth to find out over the next year or so if there is something, you know, that is a side effect, like you'd say, as of right now, we haven't seen anything, but we are keeping our eyes open because we want to know what is the long term effects of this and over, like I said, seven years, five years being actively used either in the lab or in the field. Nothing has reared its head as as a big warning sign as of yet.
Are you having any issues with government acceptance overseas like in the EU? Are you able to use this there yet? We're in the regulatory process there. It is a longer process that is here. It's not so much that they don't want it or that they're giving us a hard time. It's just that inherently their administrative process is very different than the United States and Canada. So it just takes longer there. Some countries have looked at it and said our mitigation strategy is total eradication.
And if you find AFB in an apiary, whether it's an infectious outbreak or not, maybe it's just simply a spore is found in a hide. They will burn the entire apiary. So that is their strategy. And so until which time beekeepers, you know, lobby for a different effect. Yeah, no, they don't believe there's need for for vaccine there, but those countries are few and far between. Maybe we're going to say something a minute ago.
Oh, I was going to say that as we continue making progress in different bee health solutions, it's of course there is going to be tradeoffs somewhere. But it's really the how much of an even if even with breeding from might resistance, for example, we know that there are certain tradeoffs there. But you know, the benefit is that the colony is more hygienic and keeping your might loads and viral loads down to a reasonable level.
So it's really just like we said, we haven't seen any adverse glaring adverse side effects. But yeah, if there are any tradeoffs, I would imagine that they're quite minor in respect to the level of disease protection that you're getting with the vaccine. Now, is this still in the experimental testing phase? Or is this something that I or some commercial beekeepers can go get right now? If you live in the United States, you can get it right now.
If you live in Canada, you have to go to a veterinarian to get it, but it can be attained without a problem. How do I get it? You talk to me. Well, I've seen your website and it looks like, correct me if I'm wrong, commercial beekeepers can get the vaccine. Do they need training to administer it? And then it sounded like sideliners and hobbyists. Maybe you're better off just buying queens that have been vaccinated.
So it all kind of deals on the operation and some commercial guys raise their own queens. Some of them just purchased. They don't want to raise queens in any case. You can either bring in vaccinated queens from approved vaccinators that we've partnered with over the last two or three years. The use of the vaccine itself. There are many operations, even some queen breeder clubs that are scattered throughout the U.S.
And they'll use it collectively and they, you know, they'll, they'll pull the resources and get a few vials and share the candy with each other and all that. We can work in either way. The caveat being that a vial treats 50 queens at one time. And so if I'm raising less than 50 queens at a time, then yeah, I need to kind of think about a smaller set, which means I'm probably ordering vaccinated queens from my queen breeder.
But direct to consumer and most of, most all of the 48 states in the U.S. is not a problem. Well, 50 because we are in Hawaii. So as far as Canada goes, like I said, it has to be prescribed by a vet and a lot of the clean breers in Canada are, you know, they pride themselves on Canadian quality. They like the idea of the vaccination because it gives them, you know, an added feature to add into that quality a brand that they put out there. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. So the next thing everybody's wondering is, is it expensive? It's all relative. That's a yes. It's not cheap. It's not cheap. Any development like this, any technology like this is going to come at a high cost simply because it is all brand new to everybody. Our manufacturers us the market several years from now with higher volumes and smoother manufacturing costs can come down. But currently it can be expensive to someone who's running tens of thousands of hives.
The payback though is three to five times more than the input. And so, and we can't speak to what queen breers will charge. We don't like to get into their business. That is their business. But you will see queens vaccinated queens on the retail market anywhere from two to 12 to even $18 on top of a conventional queen. So that's what we're seeing in the market as far as retail queens go as far as the vaccine itself. It all depends on the volume that you're getting.
And so it's on a sliding scale as to how many vials you want to try and and the operation itself and that kind of thing. And so, direct to the question, we're seeing increased prices between $12 and $18 on the online markets that are offering these queens. I don't know. That seems kind of fair because compared to having to replace the queen, that's less, especially compared to if the queen goes downhill bad enough that I'm losing a whole colony. That's a whole lot worse.
So, yeah, doesn't sound that unreasonable to me, frankly. And by the way, you guys aren't paying me for this. No, that's right. No, just so everybody knows I'm being a little bit objective at least a little bit here. Very good. So somebody mentioned Varroa mites a minute ago. I don't suppose you have some kind of a sterilization tool for Varroa mites. Do you? And that'd be nice.
I think the vaccine is interesting in a way since we were talking about the form wing and kind of what that opens up and how that interacts with your mites loads and of course always practice good IPM and keeping your mites loads down. That should be for anything, you know, whether you're thinking about adding in a probiotic or feed supplement or anything. I think keeping your mites under control is number one.
But, you know, we know that even say, even once you get your mites loads under control, we know that the viruses tend to lag behind. And this I'm kind of saying this on the back of, well, if I keep my mites under control, why would I need a vaccine that protects against a form wing virus? So we know that the viruses can lag, but also that they can persist even in low mite thresholds.
So having that kind of extra layer, of course, me as a scientist and kind of having more of the background in mite resistance breeding, you know, you're really setting yourself up well if you have selected stock for hygiene and the vaccine. You got some good stock on your hands then. What else do we need to know about B Health that you can enlighten us with?
Just overall health diseases, whether we have a beginner listening today or somebody that's been doing this 20 years, I have a feeling Phoebe that, you know, 50 times more than most of us do. So give us a little wisdom before we sign off. Sure. Yeah, I think being educated, there's so many great resources online.
And of course, with it being the internet, there's always a lot of not so great information too, but finding trusted sources where you know you can learn about different diseases and there really are a lot fungal bacterial viral that all present very differently in the hive.
So knowing what kind of diseases you're looking for, how to get help when you need it, either reaching out to your apiary inspector or once again, the internet is a great place for connecting with people that have a lot of experience to that. You can say, hey, I'm seeing this, you know what I should be doing.
So just I think it's really in the the education and being prepared with how do I protect my bees and referring back to the IPM triangle. There are certain things that you can do, for example, hygienic stocks, the vaccine, things that you should be doing that are kind of working in the background to prevent disease from building up.
And then once you see certain symptoms, grading how bad it is and kind of having an arsenal in your mind of things that you can refer to and implement when things get dire and doing it in a sustainable way. So but really having the resources and connecting with people and beekeeping is hard to do in a vacuum, if not impossible. So having the community is is really important in growing as a beekeeper.
And two, from an industry perspective, what I'm seeing is an unrelated to Daller, other than, you know, I like to take the credit that we pop the top on all this. But in general, there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon for bee health that are not just new iterations of old technologies. We're talking about groundbreaking use of amino acids from light control that are coming online. We've got other feed based products coming out regarding light control.
There's other companies that are looking at what can we do to help the bees now because the spotlight is becoming brighter and brighter on the beekeeping industry when it comes to preserving bee health for the purpose of food supply chain. Not because we're saving the bees or saving pollinators, which is all very important. Don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, saving the commercial beekeeping industry is a key in how we go forward in our current agricultural landscape.
Until that changes, we have to focus on bee health and some larger companies with some real big investment potentials are that have been on the sidelines for years are now seriously considering coming off and investing in some of these technologies. That's exciting to see because we need a healthy robust industry to move forward and really be there so that we can get the food we want from our grocery stores. All right, before we wrap up, Phoebe, I'm going to give you last word.
You know what's coming. I've been waiting. A wild and crazy beekeeping story. Let's have it. So in 2019, I did a portion of my masters in Israel, and this is the first time I was ever out of the US. I was born and raised on a farm in Maryland, and it was crazy just to have that opportunity. But I was basically there, traveled there by myself. And so I was working with a couple of scientists there, this lab in the middle of a mango grove, and they had taken off for the day.
They were going to work with a beekeeper in the north. And I was to take care of the beekeeping that day, and I was running some experiments. And so the one scientist had left his dog there with me, and we're kind of, you know, me and the dog were getting our experiments ready. And so I go outside. I have my beekeeping suit on and I opened up the door and there was a SWAT team there. And Leah, the dog took off because there were gunshots and I shut the door for a minute.
And I was like, okay, did I really just see that? Leah just took off and I'm trying to figure out what is even going on. I opened up the door again and I made eye contact with one of the guys that was in the SWAT uniform. And I was like, okay, they're not going to shoot me right. So I just kind of went on about my day. I was in the hives. There was probably about 50 of them there in this one yard. And they were hiding in the trees around me and I could still hear gunshots around me.
But in my mind at the time, I thought it was still, I didn't know if it was real or not. I mean, it was real, but in a real scenario. So then I get back to the lab like four hours later and I got a text from the scientist that she said, oh, I forgot to tell you the police were running a scenario today. They're just practicing. Don't worry about those. You know, I'm like borderline tears. Just slipped my mind that one.
I was there for six weeks and you know, I had my samples and I was like, well, if this is how I go out, this is in the name of being research. I've never seen a terrorist wearing a beekeeper suit. I imagine they come along on my truck, Eric. I can show you a few. Okay. Well, there aren't many beekeeping stories that involve guns. So congratulations. That may be a first, at least for this show. It definitely is. Hey, Phoebe and Everett, thanks so much for being with me today.
Yeah. If somebody has more questions, where can they get some information or ask questions? So if you just want to visit our website at ballondan, as in Nancy.com. And you can go to contact us and someone will be in touch with you within 24 hours, you know, depending on the day, if it's a weekend or not. You can reach out to me specifically if you add those postings on your podcast. Yeah, I'll put this all in the show notes. So whatever you're comfortable with doing, reach out and learn more.
There's tons of resources on our website so you can do a lot of your own research beforehand. But we're here to answer any questions you have. There's a lot of problems out there. I'm glad we have people trying to solve them. So thank you. And I have a feeling there's a whole bunch more coming down the road. Very good. Pleasure to be with you, Eric. Thank you. One quick story in the news here before we wrap up. I love creative beekeepers, especially creatively solving problems.
Now this story I found from the UK and the headline is our bees now have a fighting chance against floods. A brother and sister have helped their bees survive recent flooding by building a floating pontoon for their hives. Luigi and Sherry Capozoli from Ilchester in Somerset lost almost all of their 10 hives during flash floods at the end of last year. Their loss inspired the pair to build a floating platform for their new hives, which saved the bees during storm Burt and Dara this year.
So the rafts, which took nearly a year to put in place, are made out of wooden pallets with four barrels wired underneath each one. They lift when water flows in with scaffolding poles keeping them from moving downstream. Mr. Capozoli said it was incredibly emotional to see their pontoon device working during the recent storms. Seeing them floating was incredible. A real achievement, he said. The bees are in decline and we try and help them the best we can.
Hence why we came up with this device to give them a fighting chance and it's worked. If anybody else out there has tried something like this, I'd love to hear about it. Reach out to me. Thank you so much for joining us here on Be Love Be Keeping presented by Man Lake. Please right now hit those follow or subscribe buttons and remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.