Honey bees are one of the most important insects across the globe. The buzzing bees do more than just make sweet nectar, they pollinate crops, maintain ecosystems and produce natural goods. According to the UN Environment Programme, they directly contribute to food security and a third of the world’s food production depends on bees. However, bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds are increasingly under threat from human activities. Bee populations have been declining globally over recent decades due to habitat loss, intensive farming practices, changes in weather patterns and the excessive use of agrochemicals such as pesticides. This in turn poses a threat to a variety of plants critical to human well-being and livelihoods.This is a problem that Aakash Manaswi, a student at Lake Highland Preparatory School aimed to solve. He noted that Apis mellifera are essential pollinators, contributing to 80% of global food crop pollination and $183 billion annually to the global economy. However, around 40-50% of their hives collapse annually, with the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor identified as the number one cause of this decline. The Varroa mite is a parasite that feeds on the fat bodies while transmitting deadly viruses.Currently, the management of these mites relies heavily on synthetic miticides like Apivar, coumaphos and Apistan. While effective, these treatments lead to chemical residue accumulation in hive products, sublethal physiological stress in bees, impaired behaviour, and mite resistance.Building upon previous findings demonstrating selective mite susceptibility to hypercapnic stress, Manaswi conducted research for three years and compared a 30% CO2 treatment to conventional miticides across multiple biological scales. He conducted a ten-week trial across sixty colonies with the help of his mite blower, while also evaluating outcomes such as Varroa population reduction and honey production. According to results, carbon dioxide is as effective as tau-fluvalinate for Varroa suppression and is more effective than amitraz and coumaphos, while maintaining adult survival, tissue integrity, immune cell abundance, and colony productivity, unlike pesticide treatments. Unlike pesticides, CO2 cannot accumulate in hive products based on its chemical properties, it causes no mite resistance and requires no protective equipment.Moreover, the cost-effectiveness of the method is also vital. According to Manaswi, one treatment costs one-tenth of a penny, for 17 to 23 dollars for pesticides, making it 14-23,000 times cheaper. This would save an average beekeeper about $40-54,000 annually. Globally, that’s $4.2 billion in savings annually.These findings support CO₂ as a residue-free, safe, and scalable strategy for sustainable Varroa management and honeybee conservation.His mite blower might be a cheaper and safer alternative to treating varroa mite infestations, potentially reducing the loss of hives. Manaswi noted that every beekeeper across the nation struggles with treating the varroa mite. While presenting his research to a local beekeeping club, he was surprised to find out that all the beekeepers spent hours treating the single pest. However, his inspiration for the project arrived from tagging along with his brother on a honeybee research trip. He was in 5th grade when he went along with his brother to an apiary and noticed almost half of the beehives were completely empty.“When I asked the beekeeper, Mr Griner, why they were empty. His answer was a single word: Varroa. I asked him, “Can’t you just treat for them?” he began to tell me how time-consuming, energy-draining, and expensive the varroa mite treatment was and even said to me that he was struggling so much with treating for these mites that he didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the practice of beekeeping before he quit!” he said as per the Young Scientist Lab website.The 17-year-old Orlando native also received the Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication of $10,000 for creating the carbon-dioxide-based system that kills honey bee pests. In the future, he hopes to become an entomologist and continue to work on the bee crisis, having patented products and peer-reviewed papers.Last year, the teenager was selected as a top 10 finalist in the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, which allowed him to work with a scientist to develop a prototype. As of now, he has three peer-reviewed papers on his prototype on the way, a patent in progress and beekeepers already using his mite blower in the fields. “The mite blower is equally as effective, radically cheaper and completely safe for bees, consumers and for the environment,” he said.
