Update on Birth Control for Varroa Mites - Norroa

0:00 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 bees' 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 Be Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends and partners in beekeeping, Man Lake. Today we're going to be discussing Varroa mites, various treatments,

1:33 and specifically Naroa, which is literally a birth control for mites. Is it safe? Is it effective? Is it available in my state? All these answers and a whole bunch more coming up. First, oh, I can't believe I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna discuss something that is very controversial, especially with my neighbors, and that is the herbicide glyphosate, also known as Roundup. Most beekeepers and people concerned with their own personal health feel like glyphosate has negative health effects. But let's see what the science says. While glyphosate may not kill bees on contact, according to one study, it disrupts gut bacteria that bees rely on, leaving them more vulnerable to pathogens and premature death.

2:20 Even sub -lethal exposure matters. Research has linked glyphosate to delayed brood development in the field. Reduced times bees spend foraging on treated plants and residues persisting in nectar and pollen for days after treatment, creating repeated exposure risk. And it's not just the glyphosate. Research has also shown that other, quote, inert ingredients in Roundup are also harmful to bees. And I just came across a brand new study out from Virginia Tech that has found that glyphosate can interfere with honeybee foraging behavior and may threaten hive stability over time. After only three days of exposure to glyphosate, honeybees showed a 13 % decline in foraging activity, along with changes in brain chemistry. All right, here's kind of a bottom line. Roundup doesn't cause the dramatic mass die -offs associated with neonicotinoid insecticides, which is why it's often labeled, quote, be safe. But that label is misleading. If you're spraying near hives or flowering plants that bees are actively visiting, you're risking real harm, largely from direct contact or coating rather than systemic poisoning. Best practices, never spray directly on blooming plants, avoid spraying when bees are foraging, and consider that low toxicity

3:51 to bees on a label reflects lab tests of the active ingredient alone, not the full formulated product bees actually encounter. Just a couple of other thoughts. Glyphosate stays active for a long, long time. It can get into groundwater. I don't know about you, but it's just something I don't feel good about it being around my bees. There are other ways to take care of weeds in your yard. If you're in a position like me where you have some farms around you, you may not be able to do that much about it. Become friends with the farmers. Talk to them about it. I've found that may or may not take you very far, but it's definitely worth a try. We want to keep everybody healthy. That's the bottom line. We love our bees. Let's do everything that we can for them. I'd like to welcome great guest today, Adam Pockel. How are you doing, Adam? I'm doing well. How are you doing? Fantastic. Are you in North Dakota? Is that what I remember? Yep, I live in North Dakota, so we've been in a heat wave enjoying our hot summer this year. Haven't we all been in a heat wave? Are you getting some of the smoke from the west and from Canada? A little bit. Honestly, I don't think it's as bad as some years, but the last week, especially over the weekend, it was really bad. So it's just kind of part of life. It's been a crazy year. I wonder how the bees adjust to the smoke.

5:24 I don't know, something I always am concerned about. I've always wondered that. It doesn't seem like it has any effect that I've seen, but then all the hives are dealing with it at the same time, so it's hard to make any comparisons. Adam works with Greenlight Biosciences, the maker of Noroa. We're going to be talking about that today. Before we jump into that, our listeners, they know what Varroa mites are, but in spite of that, With some newbies around, take a very short 20 -30 seconds and tell us what the heck these stupid mites are and why they're a problem and why every single beekeeper needs to be aware. The way I like to tell people is imagine you had a tick on you the size of a dinner plate and that's kind of what a varroa mite is for a honeybee there. parasitic mite they feed on the larvae they feed on the adults and they spread disease they weaken the colony it just there's nothing that they do that's good and so keeping them under controls one of the most important things a beekeeper can do and if you think your bees are immune to it think again please they're not yeah if anyone could could come up with a truly resistant strain they'd be a millionaire real quick yeah Well, people are working on it.

6:45 We'll see. They are. So Narrowa just came out for the public about a year ago. Will you update us a little bit on the progress? Because last we talked last fall, it was available in some states and not in some other states. And here in the U .S. and let's talk about foreign countries too. Where is it available? Yep, you're right. So we got registered on September 25th of 2025. If I remember right, I might be off by day. That was our federal registration. If you have to go through and get registered in every state, we received our last state registration in, I think it was May, late April or May, which was New York. So it's now available in all 50 states as well. I believe we were registered in Puerto Rico as well. And now we're under review in Canada.

7:36 in Mexico, in the European Union, in New Zealand. We're looking at Australia. We haven't submitted there yet, but it's definitely on our radar and something that we're probably going to work towards. So yeah, there's a lot going on. We passed the kind of initial registration stage in the U .S., but now we're looking elsewhere as we work on kind of the next steps in the U .S. Well, I know it's not easy to get something like this approved in other countries, especially. And so good luck with that. We had somebody from Australia on the show last week, Cedar Anderson, and yeah, they would love it down there. And we have a lot of listeners in New Zealand and the UK, etc.

8:17 So hopefully those things will move swiftly. For those that didn't hear our episode last time around, I don't want you to dig really deep into the science, but tell us what Naroa does compared to regular miticides that are out there. and some of the alternatives that are out there. Yeah, it's really cool. You know, as beekeepers, we've kind of been conditioned to just letting our mite populations build up. And then once they reach a certain level where we think they're too high, we kill them off. We use what we refer to as knockdown products. And EROA kind of reshapes how a person can approach their mite control. Instead of killing mites, it stops them from reproducing. So if you apply when your mite levels are low, Those mites that that exist in your hive and you always have some some degree of rural mites in your hive But the ones that are there won't be able to reproduce anymore. So instead of seeing that Exponential growth curve that we're used to it flat lines for as long as it's effective in the hive Which we've seen is up to 18 weeks or four and a half months And how does it do it? Is it just killing mites or what's it doing different? So it's it's delivered through a sugar syrup and in the pouches if you take a look at a norah pouch the active ingredients in a sugar syrup you peel back a sticker that exposes some holes the bees can then take those that syrup and store it in their brood box and then those stores in the brood box are used to feed the older larva so when that gets deposited in the cell as brood food the mites come in contact

9:49 when they're hiding underneath the larva and they absorb the active ingredient. That starts a process called RNA interference, which we could spend a long time just describing how that works. But basically, it genetically blocks a protein from being produced. And without that protein, then they can't lay eggs. It's a really natural process. It's happening in our bodies right now. It's how cells regulate themselves. So we're just kind of utilizing this technology and this ability that we have now to stop them from reproducing instead of just outright killing them and letting them bounce right back. I like just calling it birth control for honey bees. I've definitely heard that comparison a lot of times now. Go ahead and say it don't be afraid of it. All right well I have some questions about it. One is now that it's been on the market for well not even a year, what kind of feedback are you getting from beekeepers? Are they happy with it? Are they using it correctly? What's going on? For the most part, using it correctly, I don't think anyone will be surprised to find out that there's some beekeepers that are, I would say, getting creative in their application methods. Some of those just aren't going to work. When we find out about them, I'm happy to talk to the beekeeper, or if someone has questions, I'm always happy to talk with them, and we've definitely had some of that. But for the most part, all the feedback that we're getting is really positive. People have used it in the spring, and now they're kind of coming... to that three or four month mark even and they're seeing that their colonies are doing great, their mite levels are low. I know

11:21 there's some influencers that used it that are planning on making videos. I don't want to ruin what they do but they they've said they plan on making videos showing that Nuro is their best colony. We've got a lot of beekeepers been willing to make video testimonials for us. We were just at EAS last week and got some footage of that so it'll be on our social media soon but by and large the results are speaking for themselves and people are really happy. The only criticism we get is the one that we know is that right now it's really expensive and so that's kind of what we're working towards in our next steps is bringing that cost down. Yeah and I know that kind of thing takes time. There's so much R &D that goes into it. I'll bet you could use one of those analogies and say well it's a lot cheaper than buying new bees. It absolutely is. I mean even if you're treating a double um using the most expensive packs you can buy that's 40 dollars and if you can find your replacement bees in the spring for 40 dollars man you're sitting you're sitting pretty great there but yeah you're right the rnd is very very time consuming very expensive and so it just it kind of starts off where you've got to try and break even from that and bring your cost down as well because you're doing everything for the first time. Let me ask you some specific questions about uses and when to and when not to. People always wonder, can I use it when I have honey supers on? We say no. Now it's safe to use with honey supers on.

12:50 There's a tolerance exemption just like oxalic acid has. So if neuroa, the active ingredient, vadascona, makes its way into your honey supers, it's safe. The reason we say no is it's really going to decrease the efficacy. Because it's delivered through brood food, you want the mites to come in contact with it in the cell. anything that gets stored in a super doesn't really get used for that in the hive so you're going to store it above the brood nest and it's just not going to come in contact with the mites and it's not going to do what you're paying for it to do. Because it works for such a long time that I believe you said 18 weeks, is it a good thing to put in the hives in the fall? Can I leave it in all winter? Do I have to get it out after 18 weeks? So the pouches themselves are only in for a couple of days. Our label says that you can remove them up to three weeks later or whenever they're empty. Usually we see the pouches emptied in two to three days. At that point it's just in your hive and the only way that you would be able to remove it is by removing the frames, which we're not going to ask anyone to do. Quick break to discuss what just might be on your mind.

13:58 Right now come on admit it. You're imagining the upcoming honey harvest Because no matter where you live in the world It's either here now or it will be in the near future and Man Lake is making it so easy to plan for Click on over to Man Lake's website for an amazing selection of extractors filters bottling supplies Uncapping knives supplies for a comb honey everything and I mean everything you'll need. But if you aren't there quite yet and the honey flows right around the corner, make sure you have extra supers on hand. You never can have too many or be too prepared. And right now Man Lake is offering podcast listeners $10 off your next order. Just enter code MLBlove10 at checkout. That's manlakeltd .com. Discount code MLBlove10. Fall applications, I would say, are a little regional. So if you're in a southern state or just anywhere where you're going to have brood for a long time, say it's now, we're in August, and you're not going to go broodless until December or you're just in a state where you don't go broodless, then you absolutely can look at a fall application because as long as you have brood, that's when it's working for you. Now, some of the northern states, you need to take a closer look at it and what you think your fall is going to be like. If I were to apply it now in August, which I can't because I haven't pulled my supers yet, I probably wouldn't be

15:28 able to in September. If I cluster up in October, that's a month that it's working for me, and then it's just in the hive not really doing what I want it to do, and in fact the workers could be consuming it. But last year I had brewed all the way up to Thanksgiving. It would have been really good for me then. So you kind of got to look at how long you're going to have brewed and again what your mite levels are because you want to start out with low mites. Okay so from a practical standpoint here's where I am I'm in a climate that gets cold super hot right now I'm in the mountains of Utah and so here's what I'm thinking you tell me if this makes sense or not I'm thinking of pulling my honey supers first of September I'm gonna check mite levels again right then I don't think they're going to be out of control but if they are I'm going to use something else to knock them down quickly then I'm going to put the neuroa in because I'm probably going to have brood well into November sometime. Yeah I think that that sounds like a great plan and we've done studies looking even if you wanted to put a knockdown at the same time we've got a couple years of field trials now trying that so you can safely put it in with oxalic acid with formic acid. with Apivar and the two don't interact. They both do what you want them to do. They don't impact each other, make it less effective, they're not any harder on the bees. That's definitely an option if you need to pull it down. It's also kind of interesting

16:59 that you mentioned timing and asking about it in your specific region because that's a question that we get a lot and so what we've done is created a timing tool that's on our website where you can click on your region Select the honey flows you have, add honey flows, change the dates if they don't look right to you, especially on a given year because things vary so much. And it'll tell you what your spring and fall windows would be. So we developed that because we're getting a lot of questions from like Utah or Florida or anywhere in the nation that we don't live and aren't familiar with their local landscapes. So people can tap into that and play around with it and see when it would work for them. I live in North Dakota. Eric, my counterpart, is in North Carolina. If we get asked by people, when should I apply this in Utah or when should I apply it in Florida or when should I apply it in Maine, instead of us just guessing or having to have a really long conversation trying to figure out what their landscape looks like, what their flow is going to be, people can use that tool to kind of figure it out for themselves.

18:00 And it's kind of fun to play around too and look at what other regions look like, look what flows they have. I've spent a little bit of time just just doing that to learn more about different regions that I'm not in. And this is also a good reminder that beekeeping is so localized, hyper localized I'm even going to say, because somebody 20 miles from me is going to be completely different than me because I'm 1500 feet in elevation higher than they are. And of course every year is different too, like you were talking about last year, having brood clear up to Thanksgiving, well this year it may be Halloween. Beekeepers know this. Check and see where you're at. It makes total sense.

18:42 And I just love this because I love anything that is not a harsh chemical going into my hive. You know, we're always worried about killing a bug on a bug. We've heard that term, right? Mitesides, most of them, they're hard on bees. Let's face it. And people even say, oh, I do OA vaporization. Doesn't hurt the bees at all. Okay. have to put on a gas mask safety goggles rubber gloves and be really careful don't tell me it doesn't bother the bees at all and I'm not saying you shouldn't use it but just be knowledgeable and realize all this stuff is is tough on them it's okay yeah well that's that's a great point And we have a lot of work showing that it doesn't set the bees back. We have evidence showing that it is, as much as you can say, harmless. It's really exciting. Like you said, no special PPE.

19:39 You don't need to worry about a respirator. You don't need to worry about your health with it. And you're right. I don't tell people not to use the other miticides. We've done a lot of work with some of the companies that make other miticides collaborating. But it's a great tool that you can use and make life a little bit easier on you and your bees. Well, and I'm glad you mentioned that I can use both at the same time, like right after I pull my supers. If I need something to knock the mites down, I can do that and have Narroa in there at the same time. I'm gonna keep that in mind. I'm definitely gonna put it to good use this fall. Okay we're gonna have some fun now then. Okay. Because you are a beekeeper and you also spent a few years as a hive inspector. Was that like for a county or state or? It was for the state of North Dakota.

20:29 Okay now I'm guessing in doing that you saw kinds of crazy stuff and one of the things that we have fun talking about with everybody that comes on the show is a wild and crazy beekeeping story that you've had. I'll bet you have a few. Let's hear some. There's two things that were scary. Being in North Dakota, we get colonies in from all over the country. I think this year we're expected to get close to 900 ,000 colonies in the state this summer, so commercial beekeepers are coming from all over. So running into Africanized hives, that was never fun, and you never knew it was going to happen until you were in it. Sometimes I'd pull up to a yard and the super's, I'm not a tall person, I'm 5 '7". and sometimes supers were stacked so high that I had to stand on my tailgate to get them off. Great for the beekeeper. I was complaining in my head because it was a lot of work for me, but I was very happy for them. Probably the one, the experience that kind of freaked me out the most and freaked me out because I was worried that I was doing something wrong. The last thing I ever wanted to do was harm someone else's hive, do something that was going to damage their business while I was an inspector. So I was doing an inspection. Things were going fine. finishing up the last colony.

21:39 I took two steps away from it, and I looked down, and the queen was walking on my suit. She was walking across my stomach, and I just froze. And I was trying to figure out what to do. It was actually a holding yard, so there was a couple hundred colonies in there, bees everywhere going crazy. It was chaos. And so I walked back slowly, and right when I was about to grab her to try and put her back in and get her by the wings, she jumped off my suit into the grass. And I'm just freaking out like I took a lot of pride on not messing up people's queens and this one was gonna go queenless so I very gingerly got on my hands and knees and started combing through the grass and I was able to find her get her on my finger and then she walked back into the hive called the beekeeper let him know about it I marked the hive for them just in case there was any you know any questions about it but it was definitely one of those moments I go crap this is on me So and you probably don't keep an extra queen with you all the time. No. Yeah, I wish it was that simple just in case Yeah, it's on you, but it's not like you did something wrong Like you squished her inside the hive or something. Yeah Yeah, and I you know, I know that that happens sometimes and you don't even realize it But I don't know when you see it happening in real time. It's like oh shoot This is this is exactly what I'm trying not to do sure Okay, how about some really we're not naming any names.

23:06 How about some really dumb mistakes? You saw people make I don't know if it's a mistake But I you'd be surprised how often you see equipment that doesn't like line up, right? So there's gaps rain and stuff can can get in to the point that you know that it's there's entire frames that are exposed That one always kind of blew my mind a little bit and I understand you you're working with the equipment you have at the time but how often I saw that was kind of surprising. And then nothing to the beekeeper. I don't know if this is a mistake, but we're very windy state. And so I'd see a lot of times I'd come in and a lid had been blown off and it's 20, 30 yards away and you have no idea how long they've just been exposed to the elements like that. But it saw a lot of things like that. How heavy of wind can bees fly in? I don't know the exact limit, but. I feel like when it gets much above 20 miles an hour you don't see a whole lot of activity.

24:02 When it got a whole lot more than that I would be really cautious about where I was working bees because sometimes I wouldn't realize how windy it was till I opened a lid and I'd see all the bees that were on the bottom just blow away. It's like oh I should probably not be doing this right now. Well I sometimes worry about my bees when it's a nice beautiful day and so they're out. who knows how far away they may be a mile away and all of a sudden a thunderstorm rolls in and we get 50 mile an hour gusts and they're trying and i'm picturing them trying to fly home and there's no way and so what do they do just kind of hunker down until they can do it later yeah so you've been in a hive when the weather's not great and they're crabby you know the weather kind of sets them off they can feel that that high pressure low pressure system is changing so it's like they know that a storm is about to come in and they'll return to the hive before it really hits hopefully they the majority of them get in before before it gets bad depending on how far away they were everything like that i'm sure not all of them do but Once the weather gets bad, yeah, they just hunker down. They spend the day inside. A few scouts will go out and see what it's like and probably never return because they got blown to the next county. But yeah, for the most part, they just kind of spend the day hunkering down. And it is crazy how they get in a bad mood. when there's a storm coming or they're in the middle of some kind of a storm. New beekeepers I've worked with they're like I don't know what was going on they

25:32 just the bees were so much hotter than usual I'm like well then leave them alone that day. You know commercial beekeeper may not have the choice but you do if they don't want you around that day they'll usually tell you and come back some other day. Yeah I'm a really big proponent of I say this a lot, let the bees tell you what to do. And sometimes they're just telling you to leave them alone. But I use that with mite treatments, with just how you manage your colonies. I don't like doing something just for the sake of doing it. So along with Naroa, we tell people to do mite washes so that you know if your mite levels are too high to use it. But even if you're not going to use Naroa, I really encourage people to do their regular mite washes so they know what's going on in their hive. And you may go in thinking, I need to do, I need to treat and then your mites levels are low, you're good and you don't need to worry about it. Your bees in that case are telling you that you don't need to do that mite treatment. And especially depending on what you use, you don't need to set them back.

26:30 I've had some new beekeepers on Facebook from time to time reach out to me and say, well, fall is coming. What do I treat with? And my first question is where's your mite level at? Oh, it's not bad. So when do I treat and with what? Where's your might level? Oh, it's pretty good. So when do I treat and with what? I'm like, you're not hearing something. Maybe this is just me, but I'm like, if mites aren't a problem, I don't treat them. And I have other people say mites are always a problem, so I just always treat. And I don't want to sit and tell people what to do because everybody has to do what they feel is best for their bees. This is my personal feeling, you have your personal feeling. I hope we respect each other. Yeah, I agree with that. Like I said, I don't tell people how to manage their bees just like you don't. I like that approach, but I'm just a big fan of listening to the hive and letting it tell you what's going on and letting it kind of guide you that way. The bees know more than you ever will. Yeah, they've been doing it for a long time. Yep. And knowledge is power.

27:43 So get to know the different mite treatments. Use the Honey Bee Health Coalition with their decision making tool. And it may have a better name than that that I can't think of off the top of my head. But it's free. Go use it. And it just asks you questions. It doesn't tell you what to do. It asks you. Where do you live? What's the weather like? Is your hive brooding up? Is it brooding down? Is your mite level high? Is it low? And then what is your personal tolerance for more harmful toxic kind of chemicals versus some of the acids and some of the other things? And then you can make decisions from that. So use those tools, talk to your mentors, and learn from everything you do. If something works, awesome.

28:29 If something doesn't work, then we've learned something and it's not a total waste if we've learned from it. So Adam, any other bit of wisdom before I let you go? You know, I just like to tell people a little bit about what we're working on because it's really exciting. I said earlier that we get people talking about how expensive Narroa is, especially commercial beekeepers. because that's their business and they would have to spend a lot of money on it. So EPA right now is reviewing what we're calling bulk neuroa. So it's a formulation that commercial beekeepers will be able to deliver right into their feeders instead of the pouches. So that'll bring the cost down as well as removing, you know, if someone has 5 ,000 colonies, that's thousands and thousands of plastic pouches. So getting rid of all that extra plastic, which I don't think anyone's gonna complain about. So that's a really exciting thing that's on the horizon. Like I said, that's targeted more towards commercial and sideline beekeepers with the volume it's going to come in. And then just, yeah, we've got a lot going on that is focused on either making it even easier to use or bringing the cost down, usually both. Fantastic.

29:35 Kick up the good work. We really appreciate it and we'll talk again soon. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Thanks again for joining us on Be Love, Be Keeping presented by Manlike. Another big thank you goes to V2B Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acids Trips. Hey thanks a lot guys. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to and follow the show, tell your friends about it, and click on over to BeLoveBeKeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or topic you'd like discussed on the show, shoot me an email eric at BeLoveBeKeeping .com 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.