Monsanto seeks alternatives to manage bugs and weeds

ST. LOUIS - If not treated, the invasive varroa mite will almost certainly show up in a honeybee hive, latching on to the pollinators, feeding off their internal fluids and threatening to weaken the colony to the point of collapse.

Western bees never evolved defenses to the Asian parasite, brought to North America about 30 years ago. Many of the existing treatments are mite-targeting pesticides that can damage the bees or their honey.

It's a problem Monsanto scientists think they can help solve by tailoring a treatment with far more specificity than synthetic chemicals, one that uses the language of DNA to target genes unique to only the varroa mite. And the agriculture giant thinks it can do it by simply feeding the bees a sugar solution full of RNA, the molecule that transcribes DNA's instructions.

Monsanto already has signed up 2,500 colonies around the country for trials of its bee health product, which started this year.

'In all my years in the industry, I've never heard of this big of a trial in beekeeping,” said Jerry Hayes, who heads Monsanto's bee health operations.

The tests could prove significant, not only for honeybees crucial for pollinating the food supply, but for a technology platform that has potential applications far beyond beekeeping. Monsanto believes it will be the first of its products to market that utilize the new genetic technology, probably around 2020.

The mechanism, known as RNA interference or RNAi, has stoked excitement among researchers and industry since its discovery won two scientists a 2006 Nobel Prize.

Hayes said the RNA interference technology isn't working as well as he initially thought. But he's hopeful it will be perfected.

'If it works half as well and you can eliminate one of those chemical treatments, you're still ahead,” he said.

Neal Bergman, who owns Delta Bee Co., a large commercial beekeeping operation in Kennett, Mo., said concerns about Monsanto's use of neonicotinoids wouldn't dissuade him from using a new product for varroa.

'If they come up with a good treatment for mites, I have no problem with that,” Bergman said.

He's always looking for a new treatment to control the ubiquitous pests in his hives.

'I think it's right up there at the top,” he said of varroa's negative impact on bees. 'It's one, two or three. It's right at the top of important issues.”

But other groups are less certain of RNA interference's safety. In 2013, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board sent comments to an Environmental Protection Agency panel looking into the safety of RNAi technology that asked the agency to hold off on registering such pesticides until they're better understood.

'Since the whole genome sequences of most plants, animals and viruses are currently unknown, how can (RNA) sequences be designed to have minimal off-target impacts?” the group asked in one of a series of questions about the technology's risks.

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a former EPA regulator and now the director of sustainable agriculture at the Center for Food Safety, said companies will have to be careful to make the RNA specific enough that it doesn't interact with other organisms.

'There's a lot of unknowns and the regulatory agencies have not caught up,” he said. 'Ten years from now we may have data that shows us these things are everything we thought they would be in terms of efficacy and specificity, but we really are not at that stage.”