in a world brimming with complexity few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless precision she dances from bloom to bloom each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct each act in service to the whole and then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to the bee's needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Bee Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends over at Man Lake.
On a recent episode I mentioned that Naroa, a new Varroa treatment, had just been approved by the EPA. I also promised that we'd get someone from Naroa on the show. Today we'll have a conversation with product experts from Greenlight Biosciences, the makers of Naroa, to tell us all about it. First from the Bee Love newsroom, so sorry for the bad news Alaska beekeepers, but small hive beetles have just been confirmed for the first time in the southeastern part of your state.
It's believed that the pest came in bee packages from Mississippi earlier in the year. So check your hives closely and take care of the problem before it spreads. Next, do you have any idea what regulations your state has in place for beekeeping? West Virginia and many other states have local, city and county regulations that are just all over the place. As a solution, West Virginia's 2026 legislative session is considering
a new statewide beekeeping rights bill. The bill is designed to protect and support beekeeping in West Virginia by ensuring that the West Virginia Department of Agriculture remains the sole authority over apiary regulations. This bill prevents cities, towns, and counties from banning or restricting beekeeping and strengthens legal protections for beekeepers. This measure replaces two previous bills that just weren't quite doing the job.
Here's why the Bee Bill matters. If passed, the Bee Bill will prevent local bans on beekeeping. Cities, towns, and counties would no longer be able to regulate or prohibit beekeeping. Similar laws exist in states like Florida, Tennessee, and Indiana, and from what I hear they're working pretty well. The bee bill would eliminate unnecessary licensing. Local governments could not require beekeepers to obtain special licenses or permits to keep honeybees. The Bee Bill would strengthen
legal protections for beekeepers. The bill raises the legal standard for nuisance complaints against beekeepers, making it harder for frivolous lawsuits to disrupt responsible apiary management. And lastly, if the bill passes, it earmarks funds for pollinator license plates and designates use of funds for projects related to pollinators.
good luck west virginia beekeepers we're on your side now let's learn all about naroa the promising new varroa treatment i'd like to welcome to the show today eric walgren and adam pockle from naroa hey good morning guys morning actually morning for me i'm sure it's afternoon for you and you guys are with Greenlight Biosciences. We're going to hear all about it today. The latest, greatest, bestest of all time Varroa treatment, which is something that don't we wish there was
a Holy grail there? Yeah, that'd be nice to find that. I want to jump into it because the thing that I don't know really anything about is RNA and your website says you're the first RNA based treatment for Varroa mites. So Which ever one of you wants to jump in what do you mean by that what does that do and why should we like it are any plays an important role in. Every living organism so there's kind of a hierarchy in biology there's DNA RNA and proteins RNA is what translates
the the. code within DNA translates that message and tells our body what proteins to make out of that code that's within the DNA. There's several different types of RNAs. Several is kind of an understatement. What everyone is probably familiar over the last several years is mRNA, messenger RNA. What Neuroa uses ultimately is it starts as double stranded RNA. I'm going to try not
to get too into the weeds here. The double stranded RNA in neuroa, the active ingredient is called vadaskana, binds to the mRNA, the messenger RNA that's naturally in varroa mites, and it blocks the message that that mRNA is trying to deliver in the varroa mite body. Because it's blocking that message, there's a specific protein in the body that does not get made. And because that protein doesn't get made, ultimately the bromides are not able to lay eggs. This process is called
RNA interference. It's a natural process that constantly happens in every living organism. It's how our bodies regulate themselves. It starts natural processes, it stops them. It's how cells regulate themselves. So we're using this natural process to our advantage. And because of this natural process, this time we're stopping the process of a protein being produced. And like I said, without that process, without that protein in bromides, in this instance, the bromides can't
lay eggs. Okay. I'm going to give you a warning right now up front because I'm not a scientist. A lot of this, I don't understand that well. So I'm going to sort of repeat some of it back to you in English and you tell me if I get it right. Okay. That's fine. So number one, it's different than the COVID MRNA vaccines, which lots of people are nervous about right now. That's
not what it is. It's also not a poison, which is basically what most Varroa treatments are, is we're trying to poison one bug without poisoning the other bug, the host bug. That's correct. Okay, I'm doing good so far. Yeah, the basic takeaway is it's a birth control for varroa mites. It's highly targeted at the varroa mite and we're using a natural biological process to specifically target a unique set of base pairs in the varroa
mite. So we are trying to figure out that magic equation of how to target one bug and not another, one pest and not another non -target organism. The way we do that is through this process called RNA interference, but essentially we're blocking messenger RNA. I love the way you put that because that's something I can understand. Birth control for Varroa. Okay, so in fact the Varroa is not actually going to be killed by what you have. It's not going to be able to reproduce so obviously
they're going to die off after a while. You know I'm curious how long do Varroa live? It depends on the time of year because the trade -off between laying eggs it takes a lot of energy so during the brood you know the season when the bees are brooding up, your queens are laying, the mites are also laying eggs. Generally mites live for a month or so because they're laying eggs and
expending a lot more energy. Overwintering when bees are clustered up and then the mites aren't laying eggs as well, they can live for longer because they're not spending energy laying eggs. They're going to live longer over the winter just like your winter bees can live longer. Biologically they're a little bit different so they'll live longer too. During the summer when you're hive is growing and the mite population is growing with them. A month, maybe two months, their lifespan
is a lot shorter. So this actually works faster in summer than winter? It works whenever mites are reproducing, yeah. All right, I think I get it. So tell me what kind of research you've done that proves how effective it is. This has been developed for 15 years now. We're the third company to work on it. The trials that we've done, we have five years worth of field trials with a number of different commercial beekeepers in several states actually across several countries
at this point but in the U .S. we've worked with commercial beekeepers in several states using thousands of colonies and we consistently show that applied when mite levels are low because it doesn't kill them it stops their population so you want to apply it when that population is low so you can maintain that and it will keep those populations low for up to 18 weeks and we've done that for several years now like I said in several states so in the north like Idaho,
North Dakota, Maine, and southern states like Florida and Georgia, and we always get the same results. There's just a really flat population growth for a few months until finally they've used up what's stored in the hive. There's nothing left to work. And then through drift, other things where new mites are coming in that haven't been affected, finally they'll start to reproduce, and then we do see population growth eventually.
So if you have a bad infestation, knock it down with something strong first and then use this as a follow -up, a preventative. It almost sounds like every spring we ought to just stick this in our hives. I mean, that's the idea, right? I mean, you don't want the damage to be done and then have to use a knockdown and then a row. You'd rather get in front of bromite reproduction
upfront. I mean, it works great early pre -honey flow spring, but anytime your mites are low and it's applied, the bees store it's delivered in a sugar syrup pouch so the bees store that sugar syrup into the brood nest and it gets incorporated into brood food and that's where the mite meets the active ingredient so as that nurse bee delivers that larval feeding that mite squeezes in and hides under that larvae she absorbs the active ingredient and through absorbing that active
ingredient through submersion it does that process we talked about where it shuts down her ability to lay eggs to your point like you said There's certainly times when you can knock the population down with a traditional miticide. We've done trials like that in the fall last year and it worked great. I'm doing the same trial right now in southern states and we saw really positive results with that. Beekeepers are going to have great ideas. They're going to figure out how
it works in their operations. We've had a lot of people, you can just see the wheels turning of how they can incorporate it at different times and how it would help their operation, be it in the fall, commercial operations, going into almond pollination. midsummer dirts, all sorts of different ways that they kind of come up with ideas of how it would benefit them. Is it safe with honey supers on? It's safe. We have a tolerance
exemption, so it's safe to be in honey. But because it's in a sugar syrup, the mites get exposed through brood food. You want to apply it without supers so that they'll store it down in the brood boxes. Now, The bees will empty those pouches in just a day or so and then like any other syrup that you feed to them, they'll move it around and they'll store it within a week and then you
can put supers on after that. So what we've been telling people is treat it like any other syrup that you'd provide to them through your feeders. Once that feeder is empty, give it a week, 10 days, whatever you're comfortable and then you can put your supers on after that. So tell me exactly how the application works. You mentioned put it on top of the supers. What does it look like? Is it a bag? Is it one of these cardboard
strips? It's a sugar syrup pouch with a decal adhesed to it and then it has a tab you pull and it exposes perforations underneath that the bees put their proboscis in and suck the syrup down. So it's designed to be applied it can be applied on the bottom board or on top of the frames but if you do put it on top of the frames you need to use a spacer. So this sounds really safe, but I get why you don't want to use it
with honey supers on. Are there any other side effects that we need to know about or concerns that we should have with it? It's so targeted that it doesn't have any effect on the pupae, the larvae, or the adult bees or the queens. The only thing to think about is from a strategy perspective is that high mite load and it's not killing mites. But what it's doing is it's interrupting
that growth of the varroa mite. So when applied At the right times of year, it equates to that four and a half months of control with one application, but there's no harm to the bees. Now you two guys personally, are you also beekeepers or just scientists? I'm a beekeeper, yeah. I actually met Greenlight Biosciences three years ago as a beekeeper. They had bees on their corporate campus and I worked for a company that managed bees on corporate campuses. About 600 colonies
up and down the East Coast. Greenlight Biosciences was one of those partners, and so I was leading hive tours showing, you know, the employees of the company, the honey, the queen, the brood, all the good stuff. During one of my hive tours, unknown to me, everyone on the hive tour was an entomologist. I would have been much more nervous if I knew that, but I was leading the hive tour, and one of the participants starts pointing out bromites on the frame as I'm holding
it up. So I asked her if she was a beekeeper, and she said, no, I'm not a beekeeper. And I go, well, how do you know what bromides are? And she says, well, we count them in my lab. And I go, okay, can I talk to you after the hive tour? So I talked to her and I learned about the technology like three years ago. So I started following them on LinkedIn and the rest is history. Cool. And Adam, you're the scientist. Yeah. So I was an apiary inspector, found out about green
light and what they were doing. And then I was just really excited about the technology and when I had a chance to come on. I just got really excited about that. But yes, I'm a beekeeper too. So I actually got a bottle. Eric and I are going to do a honey swap. I don't know if you can see it. So I got a bottle of my honey here. It's not picking up with the background, but I got it here so I don't forget to pack it for the next conference that we're both going to
be at. So speaking of conferences, where can we see you guys if we want to meet you and ask a bunch of questions in person? Next is Montana. I'm in Montana tomorrow, leaving tomorrow for Montana. We'll be in right now, Oregon. Texas, California, AHPA, ABF, North American Honey Bee Expo. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. The full list is on our website, neuroa .com. So with a lot of treatments that are out there, you can't use them above 80 degrees Fahrenheit or something
like that. And there's dangers, there's reasons for that. Even things that we consider to be pretty safe for bees like oxalic acid. We're told, wear all this protective gear. What do we have to do for neuroa? So neuroa is different than anything we've had for use as beekeepers. There is no temperature restrictions. Any working temperature, you can work your bees, you can apply neuroa. It's so safe that actually there's
no special PPE needed to apply it. If you're a beekeeper that doesn't bee keep with gloves or you don't bee keep with a veil, there's no special PPE to apply it. That is pretty nice. There's no temperature restrictions either. Whatever temperature you work your bees in whether that's Well any temperature restrictions that's safe for working bees. So 50 degrees 105 degrees anywhere in between you can apply it storage temperatures.
We just say room temperature You don't want to keep it above a hundred degrees long term So, you know, don't just keep it out in some shed where it's gonna you know, if you're in in Texas or Florida and it's your sheds gonna be a hundred and 50 degrees for weeks on end. Don't keep it out there, but keep it in your garage. Keep it on a shelf in your basement or something. It can be in a hot vehicle all day long while you're out working your bees. That's no problem for
a day. Just long -term you don't want to let it be really hot. Then it can start to degrade. Cold is no problem. We've done freezing studies to make sure that if it does freeze it'll thaw just fine. That's not a problem. That was definitely something I thought about living in North Dakota. We think about things freezing all the time. no temperature restrictions and it has a two -year shelf life. So if you buy some now and you don't use it all up, it'll be just fine next
year. Lady just teed off and hit a tree by the way. I wish you could have heard it. It was all different sound. By the way, that is a real golf course behind me. This isn't one of those superimposed deals going on. There they are now. Are you a beekeeper who loves sharing tips, asking questions, and showing off your latest honey haul? Then join The Hive, introducing the Man Lake beekeeping community on Facebook, your new go -to for everything
honey bees. Whether you're struggling with mites, trying a new winterization method, or just need to know what that weird thing on your frame is, our group is a supportive, spam -free zone for beginners and pros alike. Stop scrolling through endless forums and connect directly with beekeepers and the professionals at Man Lake in one buzzing place. We'll put a link to it down in the show notes. Just click over and join up. We have listeners that are all kinds of beekeepers, including some
that are treatment -free beekeepers. So of course they're going to be hesitant to use anything, but can you maybe give them some reasons why they should consider this? One of the things I talk about is many of the reasons why treatment -free beekeepers are approaching it is because they're having to deal with the mitigating the risks of putting other products that could harm the bees into the colony. So Naroa is a completely different angle. It's not affecting the bees
at all. It's not even killing the mites. It's biologically interrupting the Varroa mite's ability to reproduce. So if the concern from the treatment -free side is safety and not having to worry about killing your queen or harming the brood or them cannibalizing eggs or pulling brood, none of that happens with Naroa. So you might feel comfortable with it even if you're quote
treatment -free. talk all why I think treatment -free is not a great strategy, but that's, you know, everyone's going to do what they need to do. Some, some people that are treatment -free are very experienced beekeepers. But if the, if the concern from the treatment is not putting an acid or a synthetic chemical into the colony, a neuro is neither of those. It's not an acid or a synthetic chemical. It's a new biological target. Good way to put it. Adam, you had something?
Yeah, there's, I know that we've had some people express concerns that this is something that's GMO. or something like that. And that's also not the case. This isn't anything that's changing the genetic makeup of rural mites. It's not touching anything like that. It's, like I said, it's just working with everything that's already available within the mites biology. It breaks down super fast. There's no residues really within even a couple of weeks of introducing it into the
hive. It's not an organic treatment. We're not getting organically certified, but it's all kind of organically made. a fairly natural process. Everything's derived from yeast, basically. I can't tell you how chemistry is not my strong suit. But the best I can tell you is that it all originates from yeast. So we're not incorporating a whole bunch of other bacteria, a whole bunch of dangerous things as we make this. So it's
all kind of yeast -derived. It's like an RNA you'd find in food you eat, with the unique nucleotides that target the bromide. But we eat RNA every time we eat, every time we drink something. We interact with nucleotides. all the time in our day -to -day activities. This is more like an RNA that you would consume as a human with the addition of a target that the burrow might attach to that. Okay, there's something I didn't warn you guys of ahead of time. As beekeepers, there's
something that we like to do on this show. For the guests that come on, I like to give them a chance to tell one of their most fun, wild, and crazy, painful, embarrassing, or whatever beekeeping stories that they've had can either of you think of one god there's more i've had i've had so many probably hundreds just pick one or two i guess always one that i probably the most stings i've ever taken in one single sitting was when a thunderstorm rolled in and
i had like six or seven supers high and i was going down to do a mite wash so i had all the supers scattered on this one hive and i was about ready to do a mite wash and then the storm just started cracking and the thunder cracked and I don't usually be keep with anything but a veil but man I learned my lesson that day to always carry a full suit with me because I got stung more than I could count. So they reacted to the
storm and just went crazy on you? They did yeah there's nothing I could do no amount of smoke I basically just had to run for the truck. Did you count how many stings? You know how you tell yourself stories, but you know, I never really counted, but I always say like a hundred, enough to get my heart pounding, but I don't really know exactly the number. Yeah. All right, Adam, your turn. Oh, I'm going with a happy one. I'm trying to decide which one. I've got two in mind.
Coming, spending a lot of time as an apiary inspector. I like to do a lot of education outreach. I work with the local zoo science museum, managing hives there. I've started getting my son into beekeeping. He goes out with me. you always kind of wonder how much your kids are listening to you when you're telling them stuff and how much they're just kind of nodding along and saying okay dad.
Last year he was in second grade last year and got to do kind of a show and tell thing and he wanted to wear his his beekeeping suit for his show and tell. That was his thing was his beekeeping suit and it's supposed to be like a little five or ten minute thing where the class gets to ask him questions about it they show it off and that's it. So I went there to help him put it on because he kind of struggles to get his veil on himself. And it turned into a 45 minute Q &A about honeybees.
Nothing about him, all about honeybees. It was like he was doing a master class on beekeeping. And these second graders were asking awesome questions about honeybees and beekeeping and asking about the queen and what happens if this happens. What do you do if this happens? What
about this? And the questions that they were asking and the way he was answering them, it was like... this kid's actually listening to me and this kid's actually paying attention when we go out to the hives and it was a proud moment as a dad and as a beekeeper it was like you know as a mentor watching someone that you've taught it was just really cool seeing this little I mean at the time seven -year -old seeing the next generation coming up and actually paying
attention knowing what they're doing and this little kid know what he was doing with bees and yeah it was really fun that is so great so you can edit mine out I like that one better We'll put them both in. We like to hear other people's pain. Yeah. You know, we've talked about this before on this show, but I don't mind bringing it up again. Heat keeping is such a great family thing. Get your kids involved. Get your grandkids
involved. Get grandpa involved. Get whoever that is comfortable with it, you know, and is interested in it. And you'd be surprised how many people are interested in it. It's a great family thing
to do together. And now he likes to bring his friends with so we got a couple kids suits that he can bring friends and his best friend across the street six months ago any flying bug that we that they'd see playing outside he'd run away screaming we brought him with once this spring this spring uh it was the second time we went out to the hives and he came out wasn't sure how it was gonna go and we got done he said can i come with every time you you go to your bees
he helped me extract a little bit and yeah he's he loves it now Oh, that's really fun. Yeah, this kid went from being terrified of any insect to, yeah, he wants to come with every time I work with bees, even if my son doesn't come with. Before I let you go, I want to talk to beginners here for a second. So if you guys would just give a little two or three minute primer. And if somebody is thinking about getting into beekeeping or new at beekeeping, what is varroa? Why should
you care? And why can't you just ignore it and hope nothing will happen? So varroa is the number one threat to honeybee colony health. You could say worldwide. We can address the problem with the different miticides that we have. We haven't had a lot of new miticides in the last decade.
If you can focus in on the number one pest of the honeybee, you have a good chance at being a successful beekeeper and it's a little challenging because you as a new beekeeper you have to monitor for those mites you have to test you have to then put something in the colony and the traditional ones that we've had at our for our use can be sort of intimidating because with them they have temperature restrictions they have risks or they're a synthetic chemical if you don't want to use
any synthetic chemicals so as a new beekeeper if you can learn three things varroa mites how to recognize Queen events in your colony. Do
you have a queen in there or not? And then how to recognize and if you have enough food I mean you you're putting yourself in a great place to be a good beekeeper but for Oh mights being the biggest pest and The one that we have tools at our disposal that we can actually attempt to keep our colonies healthy in 2025 going to 2026 staying on top of it from spring all the
way through. If you can just learn how to make sure that your colony's varroa mites are low consistently, you have a good chance at having overwinter colonies and being a successful beekeeper. Great summary, Adam. The way I like to describe it is if you go out hiking, everyone knows, you know, if you spend any time outdoors, what ticks are. Imagine a tick on you the size of a dinner plate. And that's what a varroa is for a honeybee. It's the largest parasite to host. relationship
in the animal kingdom. And bees, when they get out of hand, can have more than one varroa mite on them. So they're doing tremendous damage. They're really spreading diseases. So it's really important to keep them under control. One varroa mite in a colony in February can actually turn into, we did the math, 10 or 12 ,000 varroa mites by September, the way that they reproduce. So it can turn into a big problem in a relatively short amount of time. It's an insanely huge problem
that people really overlook. for that same reason. They think that it isn't a big problem, but one can turn into a huge problem very quickly. So yeah, learning how to recognize that is crucial. As a new beekeeper, it can also be really hard to know how to overwinter, like Eric said. So learning how to just manage resources is really
important. And unless you live in places like Nova Scotia, Molokai, Kauai, Kangaroo Island in Australia, Unless you're in one of those really isolated really lucky places You have Varroa in your hive if you bought a package or you bought a nuke You have Varroa already If somehow you believe your bees do not have any mites at all Well, there are bees from other colonies, especially drones coming around and dropping some in your hive Don't assume that you got the good batch
Because it's everywhere. It just is we have to admit it We have to deal with it part of what we do on this show is give people an idea of all the different ways to deal with it Okay, even if you're treatment free you're dealing with it in some ways and if you use treatment There's lots of different ways that you can different things you can be comfortable with different times of year So do your research and we're not going to tell you what to do. We want you to
make the best decision for your bees. Be intuitive, do your research and then do what's going to be best for them. So my other last, last question is, is Naroa available right now? And if so, where? Because I read that it was just approved by the EPA here in the States. Yeah, it was, uh, so it was registered on September 25th. Yeah. So we've only been federally registered for a few short weeks. But we've already have nearly 20 states available for purchase and then by
the time this airs we expect some more. We even got California which is traditionally one of the harder ones to get but they did a thorough review and we were on a fast track with them and it just is a testament to how safe Narrow is. Most of us don't understand the process so the EPA approves that we assume you can send it out all over the country but there is a little process in each state too right? Yeah, every state has their own process. Each state is a
little different. Some of them you just fill out a paper and pay your fee. Some of them have to do a little review. Some of them you can do online. Some of them you have to fill out an actual paper form and send it in. And then each one's review process takes a little bit different. So we're working through all that. Like Eric said, we're at near 20 states at this moment. By the time this airs, it'll probably be more.
New ones are coming on all the time. So it sounds like by the end of the year you'll have maybe the majority of states. How hard is it to be approved in other countries? It's about like going through EPA. So we're under review in Canada right now. Talking with our regulatory team, they're actually probably more difficult to get registered with than in the United States. We're under review in Mexico, we're under review in New Zealand, and we are submitting in the European
Union. We're submitting with them this month. Each one has a different process. They all require the same data but they want their studies done in their geography so we've got to do the same studies all over again in every region. It's not an easy or a cheap process. All that to say it's a lot of time and money to bring something to market. So if you live in the EU or Australia or even Canada or New Zealand you may have to
be patient for a while to get this. If it's government you have no idea how long it's going to take. could be a year or two or who knows. Exactly. But the fact that it's safe and it's proven here hopefully will speed that whole process up. When it comes to Naroa, which is new to me and I can't wait to try it, I'm just going to ask you Eric the last two questions that are the key to everything in the bottom line to this whole conversation. Number one, is it safe and number two, does it
work? Yeah, I mean it's incredibly safe. It's one of the safest if not the safest rural control we have. It's so biologically targeted, the bromide, it kind of solves that problem that we've been trying to solve is affecting the pest and not the non -target organisms. So we're using a biohack, we're using biology to do that. So it's incredibly safe and, you know, it's been in development for over 10 years. This sort of technology won the Nobel Prize back in 2006. We're all the way
back and now we're in 2000, almost 26. We actually have products now through Greenlight Biosciences that address these pests and some of these. crops and in our case beekeeping. So incredibly safe, incredibly effective. We saw consistent results in different geographies in the United States showing up to four and a half months of control with a single application. And you guys are also experienced beekeepers and are telling us, yeah.
You've used it. It works good. So, Eric and Adam from Greenlight Biosciences with the product Naroa. We'll stick a link down in the show notes. If anyone wants to do more homework, check out your website. It'll be there. Thanks for being with me, guys, and I'll see you in January at Nobby. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on Be Love Beekeeping presented
by Man Lake. If you like this content, I hope you'll share it with a friend, follow and subscribe to this podcast, and even sign up for our newsletter at BeLoveBeekeeping .com. Also just a shout out to Vita Bee Health for their support, we appreciate them. Vita's Varroa control range of products includes Apistan, Apagard, and now Varroxan, extended release oxalic acid strips. Thanks guys. 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.