This Enterprise Develops a Vaccine for Honeybees; Shrimp Vaccination Planned Next.
Dalan Animal Health is striving to sell its bee vaccines to commercial beekeepers and governments, and potentially expand to other invertebrates.
This Enterprise Develops a Vaccine for Honeybees; Shrimp Vaccination Planned Next.
How do you inoculate a honeybee, and will beekeepers care enough to do so?
These are the concerns Annette Kleiser has been grappling with since launching Dalan Animal Health in 2018. Five years later, the government authorized an oral vaccine developed by her team, designed for commercial beekeepers to feed to worker bees, who then transfer it to their queens via royal jelly. The outcome is immunity for the queen's offspring. Now, Kleiser aims to vaccinate as many bees as possible, safeguarding not only the hives but the crops they pollinate.
“We recognize the loss of insects is detrimental for our world,” Kleiser stated. “We cannot survive on this planet or any other without insects.”
The Dalan vaccine shields against a devastating bacterial disease called American Foulbrood, and Kleiser sees it as a stepping stone to maintaining the health of the approximately 3 million honeybee colonies in the U.S. It’s not the only disease bees can contract; about 50% of colonies and millions of bees perish each year from a myriad of issues, including the harmful varroa mite, pesticide exposure, inadequate nutrition, and the strain of traveling to pollinate crops. These figures pose significant challenges for beekeepers: “Imagine a cattle farmer losing 30 to 50% of their livestock annually,” said Matt Mulica, a senior project director at the Keystone Policy Center, which supports the Honey Bee Health Coalition. “How do you combat that?”
Kleiser and her Dalan Animal Health team in Athens, Georgia, believe specially created bee vaccines will help keep more bees alive, benefiting commercial beekeepers who maintain between 5,000 and 30,000 colonies.
“If you experience an outbreak of American Foulbrood, the spores are highly resilient, and the recommended treatment is to destroy all the bees and burn the hives,” said Tom Chi, founder of At One Ventures, who backed a $3.6 million seed round for Dalan as it advanced its vaccine against American Foulbrood through clinical trials. “It’s catastrophic if you contract it.”
Kleiser, who holds a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, discovered the research leading to bee vaccines while helping universities turn academic work into businesses. Her encounter with Estonian biologist and zoologist Dalial Freitak, who proposed injecting an inactivated bacteria into a queen to boost the hive's overall disease resistance, intrigued Kleiser. “Why isn’t anyone doing this?” she wondered.
“If someone manages to halve their winter losses because of vaccinated queens, it would spread like wildfire.”
Kleiser spun Freitak’s research into a business, then crafted a vaccine that’s blended into “queen candy” for the queen’s attendants, which the attendants integrate into the royal jelly fed to the queen. The result is that the queen’s larvae will be conditioned against the disease when they hatch.
Beekeepers are closely observing the developments. “This is entirely new, and I believe that’s why it has generated a lot of interest and enthusiasm,” said Blake Shook, a commercial beekeeper in Leonard, Texas, who is testing out the new vaccine. Governments are also interested, with Kleiser in discussions with several nations in Asia, South America, and Europe about acquiring the vaccine to protect their bee populations, although she declined to name which ones. She has raised $14 million in venture capital from At One Ventures and Prime Movers Lab so far. While Dalan is still an early-stage company with revenue under $1 million, Kleiser remains hopeful she will secure major contracts with both governments and commercial beekeepers within the year.
However, there’s a significant obstacle: persuading beekeepers that the $10 per vaccine cost is warranted. “Everyone is interested, but it’s expensive, and beekeeping isn’t exactly a high-profit industry,” Shook explained to Our Website.
Russell Heitkam, whose Heitkam’s Honey Bees is a prominent queen producer (he annually sells around 75,000 queens), stated his clients are working diligently to understand the economics and value of vaccination. For a commercial beekeeper managing 30,000 hives, vaccinating at $10 per queen adds up to approximately $300,000 annually. Heitkam, who is collaborating with Dalan on vaccine trials, wants to see evidence that the vaccines allow each colony to become more populated with healthier insects that can produce greater volumes of honey and pollinate more effectively. Dalan argues that the cost to vaccinate will be recouped by having fewer bees perish and more survivor insects, but Heitkam and other beekeepers want to see the vaccine do more than just ward off American Foulbrood, a threat that commercial beekeepers can partially mitigate through better beekeeping practices, such as avoiding equipment sharing between colonies and thoroughly cleaning hive tools.
Folks reach out and ask, "Yo, I'm looking to get some queen bees, should I get 'em vaccinated?" he shared. A standard queen bee goes for around $28, and now you're looking at an extra $10 due to vaccinations, so it's crucial to find a way to profit from that added cost.
But, he emphasizes, "If these vaccinated queens can contribute one more frame of bees during pollination time, it'll cover the cost itself." A frame, being a moveable section of the hive, can house approximately 2,000 to 2,500 bees.
Chris Hiatt, a prominent beekeeper and president of the American Honey Producers Association, backs up this notion. "In beekeeping, word of mouth is key. If someone manages to halve their winter losses thanks to these vaccinated queens, the news would spread like wildfire," he mentioned.
This discussion centres around one bee disease, but Dalan's researchers are also investigating whether their vaccine could shield against others, notably deformed wing virus – a particularly hazardous strain. Preliminary trials on over 400 commercial hives have shown a 83% decrease in the intensely transmissible variant of this virus. "Anything above 65% to 70% is regarded as effective treatment, and we're well surpassing that threshold," investor Chi remarked.
Future plans involve venturing beyond honeybees to other invertebrates, beginning with shrimp. "From day one, it was apparent to me that this isn't just a solution for one insect but could potentially apply to all invertebrates," said Freitak, the company's scientific cofounder.
Shrimp farming, valued at $40 billion, experiences considerable losses each year due to diseases, despite heavy reliance on chemical pesticides that pose substantial environmental harm. "There are billions in losses, and shrimp production has a major impact on mangroves due to the chemicals used in shrimp farming," Kleiser explained.
Since shrimp and bees share a comparable immune system, she believes Dalan could administer vaccines to maternal shrimp in a similar manner to queen bees. The company has started trials for a common shrimp disease, white spot syndrome virus, starting with smaller shrimp and then moving on to larger, commercially viable ones. Initial findings show a promising 64% survival rate in early trials at an aquaculture research facility. "In shrimp, everything has failed in the field, but we believe our approach has a chance to crack the market," she stated.
If the vaccine works for bees and shrimp, one might wonder about its potential applications. Long-term, Kleiser believes that even mosquitoes, responsible for diseases such as malaria and dengue fever in humans, could potentially be vaccinated, reducing outbreaks globally. As climate change raises the risk of formerly tropical diseases spreading to the north, the ability to vaccinate insects could eventually prove equally vital for human health as for food security.
"It's much, much bigger than the honeybee," Kleiser concluded. "The honeybee is substantial because we need this animal to feed us, but the science unfolding is far beyond just this."
- Annette Kleiser, from Dalan Animal Health, aims to expand the use of their bee vaccines to other invertebrates, including shrimp farming, due to the significant losses experienced each year from diseases.
- The oral vaccine developed by Dalan Animal Health protects honeybees from American Foulbrood, a devastating bacterial disease, but bees also face other threats such as varroa mites, pesticide exposure, and nutritional issues.
- The Dalan Animal Health team is collaborating with shrimp farmers to test a vaccine against white spot syndrome virus, a common shrimp disease that causes substantial losses in the $40 billion shrimp farming industry.
- The honeybee vaccine developed by Dalan Animal Health has shown promising results in reducing the intensity of deformed wing virus by 83%, which is considered an effective treatment for this highly transmissible virus.
- Climate change poses a significant risk to global health, as formerly tropical diseases could spread to new areas. Dalan Animal Health's cutting-edge science in vaccinating insects, including mosquitoes, could potentially reduce outbreaks of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.