Especially autumn and winter treatment relies on chemicals that are not without adverse side effects on human health. It should be noted that the bees also do not benefit. Scientists from the University of Tennessee have now developed an RNA pesticide that can destroy a tick without endangering both bees and humans.
The pesticide works by interrupting and prevents the passage of the signal from a certain gene in the body of the tick. This will drain this mite. By turning off the gene that the tick needs for survival, this species can be dominated without any extensive damage to other mites, invertebrates and vertebrates. “This pesticide has the potential to be the most specific pesticide we know,” announced Professor Juan Luis Jurat-Fuentes Journalists at the American Association for the Development of Science (AAAS) in Boston.
The first commercially available pesticide based on this technique, which is used to destroy potato tape, has just entered the market. The approval of pesticide is now being considered to treat the beeworks. Instead of direct spraying, it is applied to workers passing through the RNA pesticide further throughout the colony.
“It is given to workers with sugar fluid. Bees receive sugar, transfer it to the larvae and it passes into the blood. When mites feed on their blood, the pesticide RNA is transferred to their body and turns off their gene, so they die, ” Dodal Professor Surrender.
