Pollinating bees fertilize crops that lead to the production of 1/3 of the food we consume in the United States. At the same time, recent studies show 98% of bee hives in the country are contaminated with an average of six pesticides.
Now, researchers at Cornell University have come up with a tiny solution to this big problem—pollen-sized technology that acts as an antidote to deadly pesticides for wild bees. The team has even created a spin-off company, called Beemmunity, to continue its work.
In a new paper published in Nature Food, Jing Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, and his team describe the development of a pollen-sized microparticle filled with enzymes that can detoxify ingested insecticides before they prove fatal.
The key to the microparticles is a protective casing that allows the enzymes to move past the bee’s acidic stomach to the midgut, where digestion occurs and where toxins and nutrients are absorbed. There, the enzymes break down and detoxify the organophosphates. To ensure bee consumption, the research team developed the microparticles to withstand mixing in pollen patties or sugar water.
After a series of in vitro experiments, the researchers tested the technology on live bees in the lab. They fed a pod of bees malathion—an organophosphate pesticide—in contaminated pollen, as well as the detoxifying microparticles. A control group was fed the toxic pollen without the enzyme-filled microparticles.
Bees that were fed the microparticles with a high dose of the enzyme had a 100% survival rate after exposure. Meanwhile, unprotected control bees died in a matter of days.
When Chen and his team first embarked on the research for this paper, they focused on organophosphates, a specific group of insecticides that account for about one-third of all insecticides currently on the market. In recent studies, organophosphates have been identified as two of the top five insecticides that pose “substantial risks” to bees and bee hives.
Since initial research, however, the team successfully modified the antidote delivery system to protect against all pesticides, not just organophosphates. That milestone led the team to launch Beemmunity, which takes the microparticle concept to the next level.
Instead of filling the microparticles with enzymes that break down insecticides, Beemmunity’s particles have a shell made with insect proteins that are then filled with a special absorptive oil—creating a kind of micro-sponge. Many insecticides, including widely-used neonicotinoids, are designed to target insect proteins, so the microparticle shell draws in the insecticide where it is sequestered inert within the casing. Eventually, the bees defecate the sequestered toxin.
Beemmunity is running colony-scale trials this summer on 240 hives in New Jersey, with plans to publicly launch in February 2022.
"This is a low-cost, scalable solution which we hope will be a first step to address the insecticide toxicity issue and contribute to the protection of managed pollinators," said senior author Minglin Ma, associate professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering at Cornell.
Photo: A Beemmunity employee, Abraham McCauley, applies a pollen patty containing microsponges to a hive as part of colony trials. Credit: Nathan Reid
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