URI_Research _Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

Imagine having a rabbit attached to you. That is what it is like for honeybees attacked by a parasite known as the varroa mite. According to University of Rhode Island (URI) entomology Professor Steve Alm, a rabbit on a human is the size equivalent of a varroa mite attached to a bee. Varroa mites, introduced in Rhode Island in the late 1980s, are a worldwide problem today. These parasites can cause drastic health declines for bees, and they lead ultimately to untold numbers of deaths for entire hives.

mite populations, effectively eliminating the parasite is essential to saving bee colonies. How can varroa mites be eliminated, especially when the mites become resistant to pesticides? URI’s Associate Professor of Chemistry Matthew Kiesewetter is seeking the solution. He turned his beekeeping hobby into a research project aimed to treat bees for varroa mites, taking his organic chemistry knowledge out of the lab and into the field. Bees play a vital ecological and economic role; not only do they provide honey but more importantly they pollinate fruit and vegetable crops, which is vital to maintaining our food supply. “There are many problems, but the varroa mite is the single biggest threat to the honeybee,” says Kiesewetter. “If you do not treat a hive to kill the mites, the hive will die. The mites are disease vectors, bringing along at least five and as many as 18 viruses that end up weakening and killing the hive.” Bees are a superorganism, they resemble a group of individual cells working together. Consequently, varroa mites impact an entire hive. And because the life cycle of a varroa mite goes hand in hand with the life cycle of a bee, the mites effect all stages of a bee’s life from larva through adulthood. While organic compounds have been previously used to treat bees, the toxicity of these compounds is a recurring problem that arises to either the bees or the people working with them.

Mites attach to the bee’s abdomen and feed on fat, weakening the bees, and they transmit various viruses, such as the deformed wing virus, which renders a bee unable to fly. With rapidly reproducing and growing

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