The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Spider Venom may be an effective Varroa Miticide, Interview with Spider Man, Dr. Volker Herzig

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

This interview is also available on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/GahhHHmSJYs

So hello and welcome to another episode of interviews with experts. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. Veromites are moving freely through our beehives and reproducing in brood cells while they pass on a range of pathogens that are extremely detrimental to our honeybees. Spider venom just may be the next best tool against this parasite. Today, my very special guest is Dr. Fulker Herzig. Dr. Herzig is an Australian. based researcher and arachnid expert at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He's known affectionately in scientific circles as Spider-Man. He houses the world's largest collection of arachnid venoms, comprising more than 870 spider and scorpion venoms, many of which he was the first to analyze.

Here's Associate Professor Fulker Herzig. So, hello and welcome. I want to thank you for joining me on the way to be and Dr. Herzich I really appreciate that you're taking the time to talk to us all the way from the other side of the world and if you would please we do have an audience that's pretty spread out we're primarily backyard beekeepers and researchers and backyard citizen scientists and so one of my viewers actually asked me to reach out to you and i really appreciate that you responded and that now you're here to share what's going on in your part of the world so if you would just take a minute to introduce yourself to the listeners and describe where you are and what you're doing right now for work. Okay. Yeah, it's my pleasure to talk to you and to your listeners.

So yeah, I'm talking from Australia, from the Lockyer Valley at a moment. This is where I live. And just to give you a little bit of background on myself, so I was born in Germany. And then I studied like biology in Germany and did my degrees there. So I got a, a, PhD in biology from a German university in Tübingen. And then that was in 2004. And then I did a postdoc in Australia. So that was in 2005. I started my first postdoc.

So postdoctoral research, which is what you normally do after finishing your PhD. And so that was at Monash University in Melbourne, where I was for three years. And after that, I have joined another sort of famous researcher in this field, which is Professor Glenn King. So he's basically the leading authority on Spider and other Astroport Venoms in the world. And so he started his lab in Brisbane back in 2008. And then I joined his group then. And I stayed in his lab as a postdoc for about 12 years. And then in 2020, I got a future future.

fellowship here from the Australian Research Council. And that allowed me to start my own research group at the University of the Sunshine Coast. And this is where I've been since. But all the time since I'm in Australia, I'm basically, you know, doing research on spider venoms. And then after a few years, I also sort of branched out a little bit into scorpion venoms as well and some other, you know, like insect venoms, assassin bugs. and

and centipedes, but it's mainly arachnids, so mainly spiders and scorpions that interest me. And I've always been interested in spiders since I was a little boy. So I've, you know, in the house of my parents in Germany

and I was beating the orb-weaving spiders that are around the house with locusts and watching them how they wrap up the spiders. So they wrap up the locusts and eat them. And so I was always fascinated by that. And I guess even from early childhood, you know, like my, yeah, my further, you know, way was already determined kind of to become a researcher in doing something with spiders. And eventually, you know, it worked out to be in the field of toxinology.

So I was interested in their venom's and toxins. Yeah, that's sort of the background from myself. Okay, so I have to ask right off the bat, since this is a childhood thing as well that you are deep into arachnids and you watch orbweavers make their kill their food, eat their food, and of course how they catch it. Did you keep any as pets inside your house and do you keep any now? So I didn't keep orbweavers, but so in Europe it's pretty popular keeping tarantulas. And over the last few decades, it has become even more popular. Yeah, actually, I did keep some tarantulas as pets. And it was a bit funny.

So that was when I was, you know, like a teen, I don't know, maybe around 13, 14, when I wanted my first tarantula. But it took me about two years to convince my parents to allow me keeping the tarantulas because they had their reservations. You know, they were like scared of tarantulas, spider, venom, dangerous, whatever. But eventually I managed to convince them, you know, to have one. And I got it as a little baby. And then I could watch it grow.

And then eventually, you know, it's a bit like collecting stamps. It never stays with just one. So then you need to get another one and another one. And there are so many different species and all of them or many of them are beautifully colored. And you want to have them all. So eventually, you know, I had a few dozen tarantulas. in my room. Yeah, and you know, when they make babies, you know,

that can be like 500 to a thousand babies. So, I mean, not counting them, just the larger ones where a few dozen. And then there's trade fairs, you know, every, you know, year or so every half a year. You know, there's trade fairs in different places. So you can go there and trade your spiders for some others. And it's a pretty interesting scene. And, yeah, that's where I got into.

to as a teen. And what was really funny about it was that, so initially, you know, I said my parents had the reservations, me bringing in the spiders. So eventually they agreed. And then every visitor they had, you know, who's visiting them, they brought to my room and then,

oh, can you show them the spiders? And then I stopped explaining and showing them. And they were all standing there listening to my explanations. And then after a few years, you know, my parents were actually. doing the explanation. So I was just sitting there and they were bringing the visitors and they were explaining, oh, this is this spider from here and this, whatever, can do this. And so it's, yeah, I mean, they basically learned a lot about the spiders and forgot their initial fear. And, yeah,

I just found it funny, you know, that they were eventually doing the guided tours through my spider collection. And I just was sitting there enjoying myself. Yeah, what a debt. You owe to your parents for ultimately allowing you to keep them. That way you didn't have to hide them somewhere in the closet or under your desk, as long as you had permission. Yeah, that was great. I very much appreciate that. And as to get back to your question,

so now I'm not keeping any tarantulas or any other spiders as pets. I mean, we do have a few larger orbweavers, you know, in our backyard here, especially around the chook pen because, you know, chooks poop a lot. and that attracts the flies and that obviously attracts a lot of orb weavers. I don't keep them. I have to clear that up for the American listeners, a chook is a chicken. Oh, yeah, sorry. They call them chugs there, but we call them chickens.

Chicken, yes. Yeah. So you see the orb weavers around your chicken coops and pan areas and stuff like that. Yes, yes. We have those, we call them golden orb weavers. So that's a spider that has maybe, you know, three or four centimeters body length. And with the legs,

some of the bigger ones with the legs, they can always be the size of your hand. But they're pretty harmless. So they only have toxins in their venom that can harm insects. But for humans, you know, they're basically harmless. They look a bit scary and it's

more awkward if you walk into one of their webs because like their orb webs, they can be, you know, like a meter or more in diameter. And they're pretty pretty solid. So when you walk in there, you kind of get stuck almost.

And I have seen sort of photos and videos where like a bird or a bed has flown into these webs and got stuck and then wrapped up by the spider and eaten. And there are some anecdotes that in some

island folks, they have used these webs actually for fishing because they're so sturdy. They're so sturdy and you know they just use a stick and collect like bend it to a to a circle and then collect maybe 10 or 20 webs and that's sort of like a little bit of a fishing net and then they catch small fish that's remarkable wow yeah well i'm already that's already more than a bargain for we have a lot going on here that's yeah that's been distracting obviously from the venom story yeah no but it's very interesting to me personally and i just hope that that falls

on others too, they just want to learn in general. A lot of people don't understand how long a tarantula can live. Like, what is the longest lifespan of a large spider like that? So tarantulas can live up to 20 or sometimes 25 years.

But this is, you know, data from captivity. Because obviously, you know, in captivity, I mean, you do care a lot of your spider, you know, if there's some issues, you know, like you're trying to protect them from predators and whatever. So I think in nature, you know, they might only be maybe around 10 years old, maybe 15 if

they're lucky. But, you know, once they get older and slower, you know, they might not be able to catch prey anymore as efficiently. So in then, or they might be more easily captured by predators. Whereas in captivity, you can control that. Obviously, you don't have any predators. And you only give them food, you know, when they're really hungry. because, for example, if you feed them like house crickets,

so they also can start nibbling on the spider if the spider doesn't eat them. And they eat each other the crickets, but they can also eat the spider, especially if the spider molds, so if it changes, sort of gets out of the old exoskeleton to grow, that's a phase where they're pretty, what do you say? They're vulnerable. susceptible to predators.

Because the exoskeleton, the new one, is quite soft. And if you still have feeding insects inside your terrarium where you keep them, it could potentially eat a spider. But normally you control that as a pet keeper. But in the wild, you know, that can't be controlled as well. So I think in the wild, you know, maybe, you know, 10, 15 years might be the max. Yeah, in terrariums over 25 years. Although there was, there is actually a report from a trapdoor spider in Australia,

and they monitored it in the wild for, I think it was over 40 years. So there are even spiders that get older than tarantulas. So I think that's the oldest recorded spiders. Spider is one from Australia. So I have to ask, some spiders are, you know, migrating around the world. we have the Joro spider here that makes a huge web that you're describing. I don't know if you know anything about that. So that's actually the same as the golden orb.

So they belong to the same genus. So we call them golden orb because if you look at the web, the web actually has a little bit of a yellow color or golden, you could say. And that's why they call it the golden orb, because the web is a bit yellowish-colored. But a joros spider is to say it's nephila. But, I mean, they are harmless. They're totally harmless to humans.

Right. But visually impressive and then that big web that you described, is that the webbing that you're saying people were using for fishing line? Is that? Yes. Yes. That's the one. Now it's all making sense. All right.

I'm catching up. Okay. So, and I have to ask because I know somebody's probably looking at the picture behind your head there. Is that that cave spider? What is that? Yes, that's the, that's the Tasmanian cave spider. I can go down a little bit. If ever a spider had a friendly name, Tasmanian Cave Spider.

So does it live in the dark? Would it have small eyes? What's going on with that specimen? So it actually lives only in caves. So it needs that sort of constant, you know, like temperature in the caves. And I mean, in general, you know, like the eyesight of spite of most spiders is not very good. Except for, for example, jumping spiders. I mean, you will notice, you know, when you see a jumping spider.

I mean, it has this huge pair of front eyes. And if you move, it will sort of turn around and look at you. But normally other spiders, you know, for them, like the eyesight is not that crucial. It's more like other senses. Like vibration, for example, is a very important sense, especially for orbwevers. Because they sit in their web and they can sense any tiny, vibration in the web, and then that guides them to, you know, where the vibration comes from and where the prey is.

And so the sense of vibration is a lot more important to most spiders than the eyesight. But there are some exceptions of, you know, some spiders that hunt in daylight, like the jumping spiders, they need their eyes. But normally, you know, like eyesight is not that crucial for spiders. and especially not for the cave spiders, obviously. Right. Okay, so I have to ask this, because obviously the end discussion here

is to talk about how you're using venom properties to control the varro-destructor mite in honeybees. But did you happen to start with spiders that you already kind of have as favorites to evaluate their venom for that purpose? Or how many species do you have to go through to figure out which one is going to produce the venom that has the traits that you?

you need for the varroa destructor mite? So the way that works, and this is not just for, you know, for our screening against the varroa mite, because in my lab, you know, that's not the only target species we're looking at. So we are looking basically at any kind of pest insect or pest invertebrate, you know, that is relevant for agriculture. You know, we have like, we screen against some flies, which are pests or beetles or beetles. also, you know, caterpillar, so the larvae of butterflies and moss.

And locusts more recently, we have a program on screening toxins, venoms against locusts to identify the active toxins. And for all of these programs, you know, it never works like I have a favorite spider and I'm looking at dead venom. So it's more kind of a blinded study. So we pick a number of venoms, you know, let's say we start with 100 or 200 different venoms. And I try to make that panel for the testing as diverse as possible. So, you know, I don't just look for tarantula venoms.

I look for, you know, other venoms that we might have in the collection as well. So, you know, like huntsmen spiders or funnel web spiders. And then I also include some scorpion venoms as well from different families. To have a really complex selection of these venoms. Then we test them all one after the other in our target species, or whether it's the varroa mite or the locust or whatever we are screening. And then we look at the results, so which venoms performed the best? And normally we get like a hit rate of maybe 10 to 20 percent.

So if we screen like 100 venoms, we might end up with 10 or 20 that worked quite well. And then we look more closely. So what other 10 best venoms? So, like, if there are some that are from related species, you know, we only pick one rather than doing, because it's very likely if you have venoms from like three related species, they will all have very similar compounds. And we're looking for to maximize the diversity of compounds that we can isolate. So we rather look for diverse selection of hit venoms. And then we pick the best ones based on those considerations, but also based on those considerations. but also based on the venom availability.

So sometimes, you know, if we don't have enough of a venom to follow up, there's no point in selecting that one. So we pick the one. You know, if you have the choice, there's a venom from the same genus and like two different venoms from the same genus. And of one we have like one milligram. And of the other one we have 10 milligram. Then we pick the one where we have 10 milligram.

Because that more likely gives us enough material to follow through all the way until we have isolated and identified our toxin. And so this is sort of the initial process of doing the venom screens. So you have a target species like the varroa mite, and you test a whole bunch of venoms, and then you pick the ones that work best. But it doesn't end there, so that's only the start of the challenge,

because these venoms, they are really complex, chemical mixtures. So they are not just, you know, like two or three compounds in there. So some of the Venoms that we analyzed, you know, have more than 3,000 different compounds in them. And only one of them might be the one that you're looking for that's, you know, active against the varroa mite or doing whatever you want it to do, which means you need to select that one and isolate it from the other 3,000. And that's actually the challenge. and we have like what's called in high-pressure liquid chromatography

or high-performance liquid chromatography, HPLC. And this is a way, you know, where we can fractionate the venom into different components. And this is what we normally use. And then we get like different peaks from the venom and we collect each of these peaks.

And one peak can contain one or it can contain, you know, 10 different toxins. And then we test all the peaks. in the second round. The first round is screening the venoms and the second round is screening the venom fractions,

so the peaks that we're getting. From one venom we might get between 50 and 100 fractions. And then if we have identified, okay, fraction number 25 is the one that causes the activity we desire. Then we look closely using mass spectrometry to identify what is actually in that fraction 25. And if we can see,

there's only one component, then we know, okay, it's pure, it's only that component that's causing the activity. And then we can do the next steps in getting the actual sequence. So this is basically like the code of letters, you know, of amino acids. And if you have this sequence, then you can actually produce this toxin in the lab. So you no longer need the spider, which is good because spiders sealed very little of venom. and in each venom you have hundreds or thousands of components, which means of your component,

there's even less amounts in a venom. And to get enough for our testing, we usually need much larger amounts, and we can't get that from the spiders. So that's why we make it in the lab. We can produce it in bacteria or we can produce it by chemical synthesis. And that usually gives us some milligram amounts of particular peptide toxins that we are after.

But just going back to that screening process, so if it turns out the fraction that we isolated is not yet pure, so there's another five or ten components in there, then it all goes back to this HPLC, and we run it again using a different method, and try to pull it apart further, until we really, we end up with one fraction that we know is pure, and there's only one component in there.

And then, you know, we follow that up, And as I described, and we identify the sequence. And based on that, basically from that point onwards, we don't need that particular spider anymore for this project because we can just rely on our knowledge of the sequence of this toxin. But this is kind of a bit of a bottleneck in our studies because we need enough venom to get to that stage. So we have a pure fraction that we can send away for,

sequencing and then get the complete sequence. And if we don't have enough venom to start with, you know, we might only get incomplete sequences and then, you know, we might not not be able to produce the toxin. And if we can't produce it, we can't study it. So there's a lot of sort of challenges along the way. So if all goes well, you know, it's a straightforward process. But on each step, there can be, you know, challenges and hurdles that you have to overcome. And that's also why research, you know, takes so long.

I mean, some people, you know, that are not involved in research, they always wonder, you know, why this can't be progressed any faster or whatever. But it's also, you have to remember we are studying venoms, you know, that no one has looked at before, you know. Like, I actually have 870 different venoms in my collection. And probably 90% of them, I never ever counted it, but I would estimate 90% of them, you know, no one has ever looked at. And so we can't really rely on any protocols that previous researchers have done because we are often, we are the first, like in the case of the spider behind me, the Tasmanian cave spider, you know, no one ever studied their venom before we did. And that happens quite frequently. So we are often the first to look at a certain venom because also, like many people don't have access to the venoms that I have in my collection, so they can't study them. And it's also not that many researchers around the world that do spider venom research.

So it's only a handful of people that are focused on that. And usually they do study venoms from their own country. You know, like if it's the Chinese, they study, you know, like local Chinese species or the Brazilian study, you know, species from the Amazon or whatever. But I look more at, you know, at the spiders from all around the world that are then kept as pets in, you know, Europe. So this is kind of a bit of an advantage that we have. So yeah, anyway, so just saying there's a lot of, you know, like challenges and that makes

our life kind of interesting, you know, you don't have sort of the same challenges all the time. So every time, you know, you look at a new venom, there might be different challenges. But like overcoming these is sort of what makes science interesting and exciting, I guess. not like working on a production line where you do the same tasks over and over again. You mentioned the Huntsman spider, which here people know is the Daddy Longlegs. That's the same thing, right? Not really. Not?

The Daddy Longlegs is not the Huntsman? No. No, the Huntsman is like, so normally like the Daddy Longlegs are the ones that have sort of a bit of a round body. and very long spin legs. It depends. So there are, there is a real spider,

like a false seed day is the family. So they have a web. And when you, you know, when you touch their web, they start sort of, they start making this shaking them a steady long legs.

But then there's the opiolones. So the harvest men. Harvest men. And these are not real spiders. So that's like... Right. Yeah. So the harvest men are like scorpions.

You know, they are arachnids. But this is a different class of arachnids. So the real spiders that have silk. The harvest men, they don't have silk and they don't have venom either. And some refer to them as steady long legs. And there's even a fly species, which is an insect, totally different, which also has sort of a small body and very long legs. And some people even refer to them.

as Daddy Longleg. So the term daddy longleg is not really you know, like a unique term for a certain animal, you know, that depends on who uses it. And yeah, but so huntsman spiders are these

are usually huge spiders. They, and they don't have webs. So they run out, they run on the ground or on a tree or whatever. And then they hunt

their insects while running and while catching them rather than waiting for them to come into a web and be captured by the web. Some of them they can be like bigger than your hand

like Huntsman spiders. I don't know if there's another term. I just know Hansman. Okay, but I did confuse that. I think I was talking about the Harvestman. It has one body part and a bunch of things. And And it's interesting, you said it has no venom.

And the folklore around here is that it's actually the most venomous spider on earth. And it just can't bite you because its mouth is so tiny. Have you heard that before? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we also have that urban myths. Okay, I'm glad to sell it. Here, I have an expert to let us all know that this is out of context. Okay, so.

I mean, even the spider, you know, where I said that has the weapon, that does this shaking movements, which is also. termed daddy long leg. I mean, that is a real spider and that does have venom and the venom has been studied, but they didn't find any components, you know, that would be harmful to humans. And also, you know, there's no clinical record of these daddy long legs being harmful to humans. I mean, that's normally, you know, the first indication, you know, if you have people coming to hospital, you know, bringing the spider and telling you, okay, I've been bitten by this and then they show some severe symptoms.

So then you know, okay, maybe that spider causes some nasty effects in humans, but there's no record whatsoever on these steady long legs or on these, you know, falseid spiders doing that. But I have sort of a bit of a suspicion where that myth comes from, at least, you know, in my backyard because I had like a compost, but I still have a compost bin. And initially when I opened the lid, there were a lot of redback spiders. so Black Widow spiders sitting in the lid

and they're eating all the insects in the compost bin and then after a few weeks and months they have been replaced by these false spiders by these daddy long legs so eventually there were no more redback spiders and only the daddy long legs and you know if that happened more often around the area

then people might have thought okay I mean black widows they're really dangerous to humans, you know, and if there's a spider that eats them, that must be even more, you know, venomous dangerous, because otherwise it can't eat them. But it's not so much the venom that they're like, that is kind of superior, I'd say. It's more the technique of catching the prey because, as I said, these steady long leg spiders, they have extremely long legs and they use these legs to pull out the

silk from their silk lens and then they throw the silk basically over the prey and because these legs are so long when they catch another spider like a redback they are so far away

from that spider that they are so far away from that spider that they can't even be bitten by that spider because their legs are so long so it's more like the the catching strategy that's advantageous in these, in these steady long legs. And maybe because they can overcome, you know, even larger spiders and venomous spiders, maybe people thought, oh, then they must be even more venomous. But that's not the case.

So for humans, they're totally harbors. That's all. That is super interesting. So now on to the honeybee. What is your knowledge of honeybees overall, or is it specifically that you understand the varodistructer mite, which I also understand, an arachnid is potentially destroyed by the venom. What's your interest in bees?

So, I mean, you know, I'm, yeah, I did keep some bees like in my backyard for a few years. But eventually, and I think there was last year, they both, like both hives succumbed to the small hive beetle, unfortunately. So now I'm no longer backyard beetles. And since, you know, we got the Varroa incursion into Australia, I haven't gotten any new bees for the moment. But eventually, I do want to get back into keeping bees again. But one of the reasons, you know, for me keeping the bees, except for, you know, having the honey, obviously, is also that, like, besides the Varroa mites, my group is also interested in finding treatments against the small hive beetle. So I didn't really, you know, like treat the bees against the small hive beetle. And because I wanted a certain population in my hives, so I can always harvest them for our research that we're doing.

And we already have found a toxin as well, which is sort of, which works against the small hive beetle larvae by injection. We haven't tested it for oral activity yet. But so this is something, you know, that we are interested in. And yeah, so that was the reason, you know, I maybe didn't, you know, reduced sufficiently reduce the numbers of hive beetles in my, in my beehives. And then eventually, you know, the numbers became too much. And then they died. And I didn't check them for a while.

So I was busy doing other stuff. And then they were gone, unfortunately. But, yeah, I mean, I do, I do like keeping the bees. It's just sometimes, you know, I didn't have enough time to look after them and then eventually, you know, no, and without any hives for the moment. But yeah, so the interest in the varroa mite actually started much earlier than me keeping the bees.

So that was basically, you know, among all the other pest species that we're looking at. You know, I realized quite early, you know, that varroa mite is a significant problem. And we started, like I started a problem. approaching experts in that field, like in Varroa Mites and Bees, already in 2016. And just as a reminder, you know, the Varroa might came to Australia in 2022. So that was, you know, six years before we actually got Varroa. I started, you know, my project and I got together with an expert in Switzerland, in Byrne.

Vincent Dieterman is his name. So I don't know if you know the Colos Bee Book. So he's one of the lead authors on the Colos Bee Book. So this is about ways of keeping bees and and you know, how to manage pests and parasites and stuff like that. I mean, he's sort of one of the world leaders in research on honeybees. and he was also knowledgeable about varroa mites. And because at the time when I started my project,

we did not have varroa mite in Australia. So I couldn't test them in my lab. So I needed someone doing the testing for us. And that was Vincent. And so, yeah, he basically harvested the mites from the hives they had in their research institute. And then he did the testing for. for me and I just sent him the venoms and you know after he identified which venoms were active I sent him the venom fractions to find out you know which peaks cost activity

and so on and the main challenge in that collaboration was that in Switzerland in Europe these Varroa mites are usually I mean all the life cycle of bees is kind of seasonal right in in winter there's not much activity you know they just kind of rest waiting for the temperatures to get higher, and then the bees, you know, start increasing in their colony size again and fly out. And it's also when they start sort of increasing their numbers. This is when the varroa mite numbers increase. So which means you don't have sufficient varroamites for testing all year round. So it's mainly during, you know, early summer or then maybe to late spring.

and then, sorry, late autumn. And so it's only a few months a year where you have sufficient Varroa numbers available. And that made the project very challenging because at the start of the Varroa season, I needed to have enough samples sent to Vincent so he can test throughout the entire season.

But if we want to follow up any hits, you know, we often had to wait till the next season. We might have to wait for another six months until the Varroa Mites became available. And this is why the whole project took so long, you know, from 2006 until we eventually published that paper in like this year, 2026, or 10 years later. Because, you know, like these challenges, I mean,

if you don't have Varroa for testing, you can't simply do the testing. And it might be easier now with the Varroa being in Australia, because I guess especially in the more tropical area, or subtropical areas where the bees are more active all year round. You also have more easy access to varroa mites.

But yeah, so far, you know, all the tests that we have done and that we have published that have been carried out by our collaborator in Switzerland. So how do the varroa mites succumb to the venom? So the way we have, we have tested them is basically

we flipped them on their back like on a bit of a glue strip and then applied the venom like little drops of the venom, like a solution that contains the venom onto their belly, onto their underside. And then basically

waited for a certain number of hours, so like up to two or three days and then checked how other mites behaving. Are they still alive? or are they dead? And we've done that, you know, for mites that have been treated with the venom, but also for mites that have been just treated with like water or control solution. And then you compare, you know, which of them stay alive longer.

And so what we found from our experiments is that, like, even the mites that have been, that are treated and tested this way, you know, with a control solution, after 48 hours or so, all the mites, will be dead eventually. Because if you put the mites upside down on a rubber strip and you don't give them water or any food, eventually after two days they will die. But what we found is that when we applied our venoms

and later on the toxins we isolated, they die more quickly. And so we could do statistical analysis and say, okay, this is not just random effect. So this is a real, statistical significance. So they are dying more quickly,

which means our toxins are active. And this is kind of the main or one of the most important findings of our study, that we can kill the mites more quickly than they would die

of kind of natural causes. Or, you know, when you just let them starve. And we also used as a control solution, we used oxalic acid as well. And that obviously also showed a much quicker response than the control solution. So the oxalic acid, after a few hours, you know, like after like 12 to 16 hours, all the mites were dead. And for, you know, for our best toxin, you know, it took a bit longer, so it took like one or one and a half days until they were all dead.

And for the control, it took like two days until they eventually die. So we can see there is a clear difference in, you know, like what our toxins do. And also, you know, the oxalic acid was quite potent. But this can also be like, it was in our essence, it looks like, you know, it's acting more quickly than the toxins that we have found. But that might just be a dosage issue. So if we use a higher dose of our toxins, they might also have a quicker effect. So we do see that often. If you increase the dose, you will see the effect speeds up.

But we only had a limited amount of the peptides for testing. So we tested at a certain dose and at that dose, they were a little bit slower than the oxalic acid, but they still showed the activity. And then after proving, you know, our toxins that we isolated from the two spiders, it was not just the Tasmanian cave spider. It was also the giant Japanese funnel web spider, which are not related to the funnel web spiders we have in Australia. So they are not dangerous to humans. And so the two toxins were isolated from these spiders. So they show the activity in the varroaamites.

But then we needed to ensure, you know, they don't kill bees as well as they kill varroa mite. So we have done kind of the same experiment where we used honeybees. And then we applied the solution of these peptides topically to the honeybees to see, you know, how they behave. And then we observed the honeybees for much longer time because in the essay, you know, they just survive for longer. So we observed them for up to 20 days. So eventually, even in the way we house them and we keep them in the lab, after 20 days, you know, all the bees will be dead.

But we didn't see any increase in the time of, sorry, any decrease in the time it takes the bees to die by any of the treatments. So the control solution or the toxins that we applied, they didn't change the time of killing the bees. Which means the treatments kill the mites, but they don't affect the bees. This is kind of what we want. But this is only sort of one safety measure, you know,

like obviously we need to ensure, you know, like the bees are safe. But obviously, you know, the beekeepers also shouldn't be harmed by any treatment that we apply. But obviously we can't do experiments in humans. But we have used some proteins which are called ion channels.

So these are important proteins that are involved in the transduction of electrical signals in the human body. If you don't have them, you can't send, for example, signals from your brain to your muscles or to other parts of your body and your body does not work.

And if these toxins interfere with this transmission of, of electrical signal, they could potentially be harmful to humans. But so we didn't find for our toxins that we tested and the ion channels that we tested, we didn't find any significant effects on this human target. So based on our testing so far, you know, there's no concern about human off target activity. But obviously, you know, if this became, you know, like a commercial product, eventually, you know, we might have to do more, more extended off-target testing.

So maybe, you know, injecting it in, you know, rats or mice, maybe. And trying some, you know, like in vivo experiments, not just on ion channels, and also trying, you know, like the unreal vertebrates like mammals and see whether it has any off-target effects. But so far from what we can tell, you know, these two toxins that we identified, they should be safe for humans and they should also be safe for the bees. But hopefully, you know, they will be good to kill the Varroa mites.

That's sort of our idea. And now the main challenge is sort of how do you like apply it in the hive, right? Because, I mean, we, you know, had the individual mites and the individual bees for testing. And then we could just use a small like syringe and apply a certain quant. like defined quantities of our material onto them for testing.

But apparently you can't do that, you know, like in a hive, you know, where you have tens of thousands of bees and some of them, you know, like carrying the mites. So, and we figured, you know, the easiest solution would probably be like a spray where you, you know, you can spray the hive and then maybe before, you know, before the night, you know, you spray the hive, then close it off overnight. it so it can sit in there for a few hours. And then when you open it during

daytime, you know, hopefully all the mites will have fallen off and the bees are still happy. So that would be the ideal solution. But we haven't tested that yet. I can't say whether it works or not. And this is sort of what we're working on at the moment. So we got

funding from the Community Bee Innovation Fund here in Australia. So we recently got like $50,000 to to do some follow-up studies on our two venom peptides. And this is what we're planning on doing. So first of all, we want to still do some lab testing where we have the mites that actually sit on the bees

rather than being separated from them. And then we spray them both at the same time. And then we see how that works. And if we can show, okay, this works and the mites drop off dead while the bees are still alive, then we can go to next. step and say, okay, now we produce even more of our peptides, and now we apply it in a few hives and see how that goes and then compare, you know, the numbers of mites in the treated versus

the non-treated hive. But this is still sort of what we can do maybe in half a year or a year. So first of all, you know, we still have some more initial steps in the lab. And we also need to produce larger amounts of these of these peptide toxins. Obviously for our research so far, you know, if we had like three, four, five milligram, you know, that might be enough for the initial lab testing. But now if you want to apply it more in a hive,

you know, you need much larger amounts. And we first need to produce them in the lab, which also takes, you know, a few weeks. So it's nothing, you know, you just do in an hour or so. Because you need to produce it and you need to purify it and ensure, you know, you don't have any. contaminations that would affect your activity. And so that's all a longer process.

And this is also another reason, you know, why, you know, we need constant, like, investment in research because, you know, without doing these studies, you know, we never know. We can't, like, whether it will work eventually or not. And so we can't, like, develop any commercial products. we don't have continuous funding and that's a particular challenge not just for this project like in general

and I see this all around the world like many countries they reduce their the money they put in research funding and if you don't fund research properly then you can't get any benefits that come out of research and

yeah and this this not just affects the beekeepers This affects all areas of life, basically. And yeah, I mean, I just see it sort of as a challenge, especially like for my lab, for example. At a moment, I do have two postdocs that work for me on this project and on other projects. But I only have funding for them basically for the next year. And then we don't know what happens thereafter. So for, you know, if you like a postdoc, I mean, my person,

the position is permanent because I also do teaching and research. So I'm employed by the school. But my postdocs, they are employed, you know, by the university, but in my lab. And I have to pay for them through, you know, like research grants that we are, for example, getting, you know, through this community B innovation fund or through the Australian Research Council. But I constantly have to find this money. And, you know, if I run out of money and then, and if my postdocs aren't.

not getting a salary anymore, they might say, okay, I have to go somewhere else because they need to pay rent and they have living expenses so they can't stay in my lab and work for free. And then, you know, I'm losing their precious, you know, skills and knowledge that they have in, you know, targeting or testing certain pest insects. And then if I eventually get more funding, you know, like two or three years later, then I have to hire new staff and teach them again because they don't know what my current staff knows. And so this continuity is very challenging in research because you always work from one project to another

and there's never the guarantee, you know, that after the end of the project, you get the next one, and the next one and the next one. You know, you might, like your funding income might run dry for a number of years and then you have to reduce your staff members in the lab. they go somewhere else where there is still money. And then when you eventually get money, you have to rehire stuff. And that's obviously a big sort of brain drain, you know, for each lap.

And also on a more national scale, obviously, if certain countries decide, you know, or we'll no longer invest in research, you know, then the researchers just decide, okay, I go someplace else, you know, where research is still more valued and paid. and that also happens, you know, around the world. So this is challenges, you know, that are just outside, you know, the venom research that I'm doing that more generally affect research all around the world. And I'm lucky that I got now like a permanent position, but I've been postdoc for 15 years and I have been in that situation

where I know, okay, you know, like my contract is up for renewal, you know, in a year. And I don't know if my supervisor, still has enough money to pay me. And this is always a very challenging time for people in that situation. And, yeah, I think more money is definitely needed in research. But the problem is, you know, for research, the benefits usually come after, let's say, you know, five or ten or fifteen years.

You know, you find something now, but until it translates into a product, or into actual benefit for you, that takes quite a long time. But then, you know, when you look at politicians, I mean, their cycles are usually like three to five years. So they want benefits immediately, you know, that could benefit them in their political career for a politician.

You know, there's no benefit in having a huge, you know, success from a research, you know, in 15 years because they're no longer in their position during that time. And I think that's a big problem. So the people that decide on how much funding is used for research, they're not interested in the long-term gains. They're more interested in the short-term gains. And you often don't get that from research,

and this is a big problem around the world. And so what capability is new? In other words, your ability to render this venom, replicate it, is that something that you could have done even 10 or 15 years ago, do you have new abilities available to you that previously you couldn't have done it? I mean, obviously, you know, we're getting like, I'm increasing my venom collection every sort of two or three years, you know, when I go on another collection trip. So, I mean, like, 10 years ago, obviously, you know, like the venoms we had available were

a lot less than what we have now. So maybe, you know, there might be other toxins in some of the newer venoms that I have, that are even more potent and suitable against the varroa mites than the ones that we have screened. But to find that out, you know, I would need some of another research project and start again, you know, initially just using the new Venoms and screening them and seeing if there's any Venoms that work better than the ones that we have already tested. And this is sort of new capabilities, obviously, that was every year, you know, every few years, you know, we're increasing our venom bio bank. But it's also

in terms of the technical development. I mean, you know, like some research equipment that we use, like, you know, mass spectrometry, you know, they get more sophisticated, you know, every year and, you know,

quantities that we can use nowadays to detect you know, some signals, you know, like 10 years ago, we wouldn't have been able to detect them. So we get better technical capabilities, obviously. And also, I mean, more recently, you know, like the use of AI is also sort of a tool that helps us in our research, you know, because we can sort of get now like structures of these peptide toxins. But before we had to do sort of more complicated experiments to determine a structure. And nowadays, there are programs

that you can use and they can predict your structure just based on the sequence of your peptide and based on the unknown sequences and structures of other peptides. They have these huge models that know sort of all the published sequences of peptides and proteins and how other structures look like. And based on that, they can predict how your peptide will look like. And before, you know, that was quite a difficult sort of experiment and where you needed machinery, you know, that costs like an NMR spectrometry, for example, where the equipment costs, you know, between like half a million and a million dollars.

So you needed access to, you know, to this expensive equipment to do this experiment. And nowadays, you know, you can predict your structure on a computer at home if you have the right program. And so there are certainly, you know, ways in which research, you know, improves. every year, which is good. You know, it's like a, it's never a process. You know, there's never a standstill. So you always have to be, you know, up to date on what's happening in your field and new developments and how you can potentially, you know, how a new development may be in another

field like AI can benefit your own research. So it's always like a constant development. But it's not sort of one key thing, you know, where I said, oh, this made sort of a major a breakthrough or whatever. So it's sort of little bits here and there that always help you, you know, getting better. But then again, you know, if you want to publish your results, obviously like the editors from the journal, they also expect more from the studies nowadays than like, you know, 50 years ago. So, you know, a paper that has been published 50 years ago with the methodology that was used then would never be accepted now.

because now, you know, they know there's more sophisticated equipment out there and where you can get a lot more information. And so not all old papers are no longer valid, but many of them, you know, you couldn't publish nowadays because the expectations also increase with, you know, all the increase in our knowledge and the technical sophistication. Now, I realize you're going into practical B-Hive testing. what do you anticipate, if any, the risk to be with exposure to honey and what people might be eating out of the hive? I don't say any issues for that because what we are using are peptide toxins. So peptide is basically like a little protein and they are built of amino acids. So it's basically like a chain of amino acids. And amino acids are the building blocks of life.

So, I mean, all our bodies, all the proteins in our bodies are made of amino acids. And these toxins, I mean, if we can show them, they're not harmful to humans. So what will happen, you know, even if they would accumulate in the honey. So eventually the enzymes in our body, they would just break them down in the individual amino acids. And then these amino acids could be used to build up other proteins in the body. your body. So, like, the degradation products of these peptides are kind of harmless and they can be reutilized in your body to build other stuff. So it's not like, you know, there's any harsh chemicals, you know, that could cause any, you know, severe symptoms in humans. I wouldn't be

concerned about that. And then we have, we have done other experiments with some of these peptide toxins where we can, for example, show, you know, like for the ones that we see. For the ones that we we're planning on spraying on crops. So if you expose them to sunlight, especially the UV radiation, after a few weeks, they will naturally break down

into the amino acids. So they're not as super long-lasting as some of the chemical insecticides that we have been using in the past and that have accumulated through the food chain. There are enzymes in our body that can digest

peptides and proteins. So I wouldn't be scared of that. And so if we can confirm, you know, there's no, no harm directly of the component that, like, when the humans eat it or when it gets into a human body, then I wouldn't be concerned. And this is something, you know, we'd have to test anyway, you know, like to ensure, or at least in some mammals, you know,

there's no off-target activity. And then eventually these compounds would be broken down. And like if you eat them, like by consuming honey, so most of them, they would just be like digested in your, in your stomach. So they wouldn't go into your blood or to be able to, you know, to affect your nerves. Because this is where most of these spider toxins that, like the spider toxins that harm humans, they're neurotoxins. So they affect the nervous system. But, you know, they can only affect the nervous system if they get to the nervous system. them, but if they're digested in the stomach, you know, they never get to the place where they

could potentially be active. So I'm saying, you know, even if these toxins would be toxic to humans, you could probably still eat them and be safe because you can't take them up through your stomach. So that's another advantage. But obviously, we try to use toxins, you know, that are harmless in the first place, so we don't have to worry about. But, yeah, there are additional sort of safety. measures for these peptides

and I would be concerned at all of any off-target effects we just need to ensure you know they're stable long enough to be active so if they're you know if they stay active for you know a day or two that should be enough

to you know spray your hive and then kill the mites and then you know they can be broken down by by natural enzymes or by sunlight you know when the imagine, you know, you spray a hive and then obviously the toxin

covers all the bees and the mites. And when the bees then fly out to the flowers, so eventually, you know, they will be exposed to sunlight. And this way, you know, this is where the peptides will break down eventually. And, yeah, so I think the safety is really good.

So there shouldn't be any concerns. I mean, what what we have to worry more about is, you know, resistance. development. So we do see that for some of the chemical treatments that are used nowadays. So like in Australia, they have now found mites that are resistant to two different classes of chemical insecticides. So they call them the super mites, which is obviously difficult for, you know, for beekeepers because they no longer have like a good arsenal to treat

their hives. And these spider toxins, they would not be safe, you know, from resistance development, because that's just like a natural process, you know. Any treatment that you give, you know, to an organism over and over again, eventually, you know, they will build up some way of resistance. That's just natural evolution, you know. Eventually, one of the organisms will have a mutation and that no longer allows your compound to be active.

And then, you know, this organism, then, persists and you know reproduces and then eventually you end up with a population of organisms that are no longer susceptible to your treatments and the same can happen for the toxins from the spiders and

this is already sort of happening in nature anyway so for all the toxins that the spiders make to overcome their prey there's obviously a constant like race in evolution you know between the prey and the predator so the spider makes new toxins

and then the prey comes up with new ways of, you know, rendering these toxins ineffective. But then the spider comes up with other toxins that are still effective. And that race goes on and on and on. So that's just nature. You know, that's how evolution works. And so we can't really prevent that. If we, let's say, you know, the spider toxin would become a commercial product. And it's very effective.

but if we only apply that spider toxin over and over and over again, eventually, you know, we get resistance. That's just normal. So what we have to do is maybe apply it, you know, like spider toxin and then apply another component and maybe another one and then go back to the spider toxin. So don't do the same thing over and over again. Mix it with some other treatments.

Or what we could also do is how applying. You know, at the same time, you give the spider toxin and another component that acts via a totally different mechanism. If you have two components acting on different mechanisms, it's very difficult for an organism to acquire resistance because they might get a mutation that helps them against one treatment, but then the other treatment will kill them. And the chances that they acquire mutations at the same time

that helps them against two different treatments is very low. So by using combination treatments, that would be much safer. But there's more an issue for this combination treatments when it comes to the registration process. Because to register a combination treatment out of two or three compounds, it's a lot more difficult process in terms of the official registration because the testing you have to do is a lot more extensive. and more costly

because you have to show, you know, all your individual components are safe, but then when you apply them together, they're still safe. So you have to do a lot more testing around that. And that obviously is more expensive. And that's why mostly, you know, in agriculture, you know, when you have treatments,

they just have a single treatment because it's cheaper to develop it than a combined treatment. and the requirements for the registration are a lot less. And this is sort of a problem I see, and that's nothing that I can sort of solve because I don't make the regulations around the registration for these compounds. But my recommendation would be, if possible,

try to use a combination of different compounds or that you know work well. together or try to, you know, mixed, like, vary which treatment you're using, you know, don't use the same over and over again. So use one and then the other and then the next one and then go back to the first one. And yeah, that might be a better strategy. Has the open brood then exposed to this treatment? Yeah, we haven't tested it.

on brood yet. And I also, I'm not sure, you know, because like, especially when the, you know, when the brood is capped, you know, it was like the wax capping. It would obviously be challenging, you know, like getting our treatment to them. So we need to think of ways, you know, of how the encapsulated brood can be treated. Because if we spray a hive, you know, and if you spray just sticks on the wax capping, then the varroa mites inside those fruit chambers, they would not be affected because the treatment can't get to them. And so, yeah, I don't know if there will be ways that we can sort of overcome this. Or, I mean, alternatively, you know, you'd have to give it maybe, you know, like multiple times.

do one treatment for the for the bees that are sort of for the adult bees that are out now and then a few weeks later once all your brute hatched do another cycle of treatment and then make sure you kill the varroa mites that have come out more

recently in this way you maybe reduce the numbers I guess there will be no treatment that really kills and eradicates 100% of the mites so it's always you know like managing the mites is always reducing the numbers

to a level that the bees can live with but you never get complete clearance and even if you did get complete clearance you know then one of your clean bees flies out to a flower and meets a bee from another hive that's infected and then they transfer the mites and then they bring back the mites to the hive so yeah once you have the mites in the country you can never expect

to have any treatment that completely eradicates them. It will always be about managing and what is the best way of, you know, keeping the might numbers low enough for the bees to live a good life and not letting them, you know, getting out of control

and then the hive to collapse. And sort of that's the best, I guess, we can hope for. And to have ways of, you know, constantly managing the hives, we need more and more and more new treatments. because eventually, you know, because there's only limited number of treatments and people use them over and over again, that means, you know, eventually, you know, there will be resistance against these treatments.

And then we need new treatments that are whether it be or where the mites no longer have or not yet have resistance. But if we only have, you know, always a low number of treatments, eventually, you know, they might be susceptible to resistance. So the more treatments we have and the more we can mix and match, the safer we are. So, yeah, that's sort of my recommendation. But as I said, you know, this would mean a lot more money into research. And it will take time.

You know, it might take, you know, 10 years until we get more treatment. So we have to invest in research now so that we'll save in the future. And, yeah, we can't just, you know, sit back and relax. and say, oh, now we found this spider toxin. That's great. And that's all we need to do. So now, now is the time to look for new treatments, you know, basically because what works now might not work in five or ten years. Now, will you, I realize this is forecasting also, but the tropololapse mite, which is also showing up as a devastating parasite for the honeybee, would you think a similar approach would work for the troping mite?

it's funny that you mentioned that because we discussed that recently was Vincent Dietermann, so my collaborator from Switzerland, who worked with me on the Varroa mites. And he mentioned, so to me, I wasn't aware of that parasite actually, but he mentioned, you know, that's sort of the next upcoming issue, you know, for the beekeepers. And because it's also approaching, I think, like Europe at a moment, and I think it's already in Southeast Asia.

And so we've been in discussion, you know, with some collaborators here in Australia and also with my Swiss collaborator. And we found someone in Vietnam who could do the testing for us. So we're planning on submitting a research grant on that would involve both testing more venoms on varroa mites, like newer venoms that we haven't tested before. But also testing some of the active components against the Tripulelapse might. and see, you know, maybe you might find a treatment that works against both mites, which would be great, you know, then. So, yeah, we're planning to integrate those mites as well into our new testing, provided we do get a research funding.

But at the moment, you know, like depending on the research grant that you submit, you know, like the funding rates range, you know, between maybe 10 and 20%, which means, you know, at least 80% of, of applications don't get any funding at all. So it's by no means guaranteed, you know, when we submit our grant proposal that we will get a funding. So we might have to try, you know, a few years in a row until we're eventually successful.

And that's the main challenge that we are facing. I mean, we could do a lot of interesting research, but to do that, we obviously need the money. And most of the money, you know, for research, when you see these grants, you know, they might be worse, you know, $500,000 or a million dollars or whatever. And people might wonder, you know, where does this money go to? You know, will it make the researchers rich or whatever.

But so most of the time, like 85% of that money will go into salaries. It's just paying the staff members that work on these projects. And then you have a bit of money, you know, for your consumables, for your consumables, for your chemicals you use in the lab and the reaction tubes and whatever you have to buy for your experiments for maintaining your insect cultures, the beehives. You might, you know, like in the lab of our collaborator in Switzerland, they obviously have a professional beekeeper who looks after their hive, so the beekeeper needs to be paid. So most of the money in research actually goes into salary of the researchers that are doing

the work. And then, you know, there might also be a little bit of money. you know, for, so you can publish your results in certain, you know, journals, like in peer-reviewed journals. And there might be a bit of money for travel involved if I want to visit my, you know, my Swiss collaborator to do some experiments in his lab or to do some, you know, discussion around writing papers and stuff. Then we need some travel money or to go to conferences. But yeah, the vast majority of, of. funding is to pay, who pay staff and

yeah, unfortunately there's not, there's not enough out there. There's a lot of, you know, good researchers and they all have good projects, but they can't be all funded at the same time. So, there's always someone who will miss out. And that's not because of the quality

of the research project, but because there is not enough money in research. And I guess that's not just here in Australia, so I can see that in other countries as well, where people are struggling well i think we've covered the ground pretty good and i think we're going to be looking forward to seeing what transpires over the next year here with your advancement into practical testing and with real beehives with do you have a beekeeper that's uh in australia

that's going to collaborate and give you access to their apiary um yeah i've been in contact with some some beekeepers um that where i could protect you know, like get bees and mites from. And I'm also, you know, like the Department of Primary Industries, you know, they look after managing, you know, like the Varroa mites. And they know sort of beekeepers that reported, you know, infestations of Varua in their hives. Because, you know, we obviously want access to hives that are infested.

So we get both, you know, like the bees and the mites at the same. same time for testing our components. And so we are working together with the department to find the most suitable beekeepers in our area, obviously around the Sunshine Coast. So we don't have to travel too far so we can easily go to maybe the closest beekeeper in that area. And then grab some bees for testing. And then they also have the mites attached and then maybe grab some, you know, brute frames as well. so we can harvest more varroa for experiments.

And that's sort of the plan for the next few months, you know, like after we, you know, produce enough of the peptide toxins for all our testing efforts. So this is happening right now, so that the peptides are produced in the lab and purified. And once we have that, you know, we'll start the testing and get in contact with some beekeepers. So, yeah, maybe, you know, we can do like an update on this,

a year's time and hopefully by then, you know, we'll have some more interesting data to report and hopefully some positive data. But in research you never know, you know, like, I mean, normally you make also for your research grants, you make like a big plan, you know, what you want to do in the next three, four years for your research project and then like you do your first few experiments and then you have to change. everything because it didn't go, you can't always know what the outcome will be. You can assume, you know, like this might be the outcome and based on this, then we do the next step.

But often, you know, like your experiments don't go as planned and then you have to change all your plans. And so we never know, you know. We can only hope the project will go according to plan, but whether it works or not only the experiments will tell us. Well, I want to thank you very much for your time and for sharing so much of what you did. And I'm sure the wheels are turning for a lot of people that are listening. And if you want to look down in the video description, there will be a link to the 2006 published study.

And any updates that I receive, of course, will be added as a resource for those you who want to do further research and learn more about what's going on with this grant. So thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, have good day then. Bye. Yeah. And that wraps up another episode of interviews with experts. Please don't forget to visit the description for additional information and links that you may find helpful. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been The Way to Be interviews with experts.