Daniel Cherix

Daniel Cherix is a biologist, honorary professor at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), and curator at the Cantonal Museum of Zoology in Lausanne. Additionally, he leads efforts to monitor Asian hornet populations in Switzerland. His expertise includes entomology, forensic entomology, and the study of invasive species.

Picture of Daniel Cherix.

Purpose of Meeting:

We gathered insights from Daniel Cherix regarding the behaviour and management of the Asian hornet. Our goal was to understand the challenges involved in controlling this invasive species and to explore potential collaboration for testing our bait design in a real-world setting.

What We Learned:

• It is important to check for natural predators of hornets in the off-target analysis of our shRNA. These predators are not well-known but might include birds like the European honey buzzard.
• Bait preferences differ between worker hornets and larvae; workers pre-chew meat to feed the larvae, who primarily eat the thorax of bees for its high protein content.
• In spring, a young queen from the previous year builds a primary nest alone, which can house about 50 individuals. The population then splits, with one part constructing a secondary nest, often high in trees, lasting until November and accommodating thousands of hornets. Around 10 new queens per thousand are born from mid-September onwards. Only 5-10% of the new queens survive the winter to establish primary nests the next year.
• One method used to track hornets is radio-telemetry; however, it is inefficient due to the large number of nests.
• Government actions are slow because the media has not highlighted the consequences of hornet infestations, and there have been no human casualties linked to hornets.
• The city of Galicia in Spain has highlighted the severity of the problem with 28,000 nests, each housing approximately 3,500 individual Asian hornets.
• There is strong opposition in Switzerland against the release of GMOs or RNA-based solutions in nature. Cherix’s team also faces restrictions on using certain chemicals to destroy hornet nests.

Cherix’s Team Initiatives:

• The team manages a website where the public can report sightings of nests or individual hornets. Last year, one-third of 3,500 reports were accurate.
• They train beekeepers to destroy primary nests independently.
• They handle secondary nest destruction with SO₂, which is toxic and requires permission.
• They are collaborating with HEIG (Haute École d'Ingénieurs Yverdon) to possibly test a project involving labeling hornets with RFID chips for tracking purposes (cheaper and easier than radio-telemetry).

Reflection:

Our discussion with Daniel Cherix offered valuable insights into the Asian hornet's behaviour and control. We learned about bait design complexities, the hornet life cycle, and the practical challenges faced by control teams. This information is crucial as we refine our bait and collaborate on practical solutions. The example from Galicia underscores the urgency and scale of the problem, reinforcing the need for effective strategies. We will also assess if our RNAi approach affects bees and other local species.

Karine Monceau

Karine Monceau is an evolutionary ecologist and lecturer from the Biology department of La Rochelle University, France, working at the Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé. She specialised in work involving hornets for a significant proportion of her career and is a pioneer in the field.

Picture of Karine Monceau.

Purpose of the meeting:

We wanted to get a better understanding of the impact Asian hornets have had in Europe and gather insights on the specific requirements to handle Asian hornets in the laboratory.

What we learnt:

• There is a lack of specificity in the methods that are currently in use to combat the Asian hornets.
• She gave us access to the genome of an Asian hornet.
• She gave us information regarding Asian hornet care and welfare in laboratory setting:
• To feed Asian hornets in the lab, she uses cat food and hand feeds them using pipettes.
• Asian hornet larvae can be kept in the lab without the adults and can also be fed by hand by introducing the food into the capsule they reside in.
• The environmental conditions to keep hornets in the lab are not very specific, generally speaking they do not have a lot of activity under 10°C.
• In order to capture a hornet nest, you need to trap an entire nest in a bucket, you need to keep the bucket at 5°C to calm them down. To obtain statistically significant data you need several nests.
• Hornets are active in 2 phases, the queens build small primary nests in the beginning of spring and they take care of feeding the workers. Once the workers hatch in early summer they begin building the much bigger secondary nests which are active until mid-autumn.
• A potential target for our shRNA could be a juvenile hormone involved in moulting. However, we were also warned that the Asian hornet and the European hornet are genetically very similar.
• Some birds like the European honey buzzard, can be predators of Asian hornets and will therefore consume the shRNA that the hornets would carry.

Reflection

Our discussion with Karine Monceau brought us awareness about the difficulties of working with Asian hornets in the laboratory setting. She explained the intricacies of hornet nest building phases and how they would behave when approaching such nests. Finally, she gave us valuable insights into which genes could be potential targets for our shRNA, and also what to look out for in off-target analysis, notably making sure that the European honey buzzard would not be targeted.

Kévin Golay

Kévin Golay is a beekeeper in Geneva whose beehives are threatened by the Asian hornet. He is currently writing a thesis on the Asian hornet for his federal certificate in apiculture. He is the founder of Pollinea Action, an association that aims to slow down the spread of the Asian hornet by trapping queens in the early season, and by finding and destroying nests later in the year.

Picture of Kévin Golay.

Purpose of Meeting:

By discussing with Kévin Golay, we wanted to gain more knowledge on the means currently accessible to beekeepers to protect their beehives. We especially needed a better understanding of how insecticide traps work, how beekeepers use them, and how we could make our box and protein bait easy to use and efficient.

What we learned:

• Traps mostly catch hornet queens during the month of April and are most efficient at the height of 1.80 to 2 metres, alongside hedges and small bushes. Traps are also set under beehives in autumn, when bee colonies face the greatest pressure from Asian hornets. However, in this season, traps never catch queens and quickly fill up with hornet workers.
• There are 2 types of insecticide traps:
• Drowning traps, which are filled with a liquid composed of hornet attractant, mostly sugary and flowery flavours, and ethanol, that acts as a repellent for the bees. These traps kill all insects that get into them, and are usually only size-selective, thanks to openings that don’t let anything bigger than a hornet enter.
• Sponge traps, which are filled with a sponge soaked in the same attractant/repellent mixture. These traps are size-selective, and prevent Asian hornets from escaping. Smaller insects are usually not impacted by these traps since the sponge prevents them from drowning. However, these traps have a lower efficiency than the drowning traps.
• The attractant/repellent mixture used in traps is easy to use and comes in small packaging. Beekeepers only have to replace it once a week. This has encouraged us to consider how our protein bait could be packaged for convenience.
• Most traps are designed with a dark entrance and a lighter trap room, as insects are attracted to light. This principle guided the design of our box.
• To find nests, Pollinea Action uses radio-telemetry and triangulation, both time-consuming techniques:
• Radio-telemetry: Involves attaching a tracking device to an Asian hornet and following the signal to locate the nest.
• Triangulation: Uses feeding pots placed at different spots to track hornet activity and gradually locate nests. This method has shown mixed results.
• Hornet queens leave the colony at the end of the season to hibernate. Once queens leave, the nest is abandoned, and birds often feed on the remaining larvae.
• One Asian hornet nest consumes up to 11 kg of insects in a single season, including honeybees, which make up 80% of their diet later in the year.
• Kévin emphasized that a specific insecticide, like ours, could be a significant help to beekeepers. Some beekeepers have resorted to using general insecticides like fipronil, despite its harmful environmental effects.

Reflection:

Our meeting with Kévin Golay provided us with valuable insights into Asian hornets' behavior across seasons and helped us refine our solution. We’ve gained a deeper understanding of the environmental impacts of our protein bait and made key modifications to our box design.

Cyril Monette

Cyril Monette is part of a student beekeeping association (Unipoly pour l’apiculture, Lausanne). Although he has not yet encountered problems related to the Asian hornet, he has heard about it and mentioned that one of the experienced beekeepers supervising him is starting to worry about Asian hornets.

Picture of Cyril Monette.

Purpose of Meeting:

We wanted to talk to a beekeeper, as they will be the primary users of our box. Their feedback on how frequently they would be willing to change the protein bait, and whether they find our box useful, will help us improve and make our product more user-friendly.

What We Learned:

• In the summer, when the Asian hornet preys on bees, beekeepers usually check up on their hives once a week. This means they could change the protein in our box once a week.
• Swiss beekeepers are already used to time-consuming treatments on their beehives to combat Varroa (a parasitic mite).
• It is important to ensure that beekeepers do not have to touch the protein bait directly, as bringing and properly disposing of latex gloves might be too challenging.
• Many beekeepers are attached to tradition and do not like using overly technological tools. Indeed, many beekeeping tools are made of wood and have not changed designs for centuries.
• Beekeepers' opinions on GMOs vary greatly. Some are completely against using them, while others are enthusiastic about the potential of GMOs.

Reflection:

It seems that changing the protein bait in the box once a week should not be challenging, as beekeepers already visit their hives regularly and are accustomed to performing other treatments to protect their bees. We need to carefully consider how our protein bait will be delivered, changed, and disposed of. Ensuring that beekeepers do not touch the bait directly is crucial, as we want to avoid accidental spread of our bacteria into the environment.

Federico Cappa

Federico Cappa is a lecturer at the University of Florence who has worked with Asian hornets in a laboratory setting. His expertise includes Entomology, Parasitology, and Evolutionary Biology.

Interview with Federico Cappa.

Purpose of the Meeting:

We wanted to discuss the behaviour of adult Asian hornets, and how to maintain and manipulate Asian hornet larvae in the laboratory. As we had originally planned to carry out experimentation on hornet larvae, his expertise would have been crucial for this part of our project.

What We Learned:

• Current solutions used to kill Asian hornets, such as baits containing insecticides, are useful to detect when the spread of invasive species is reaching new regions by checking the traps and monitoring the species found in them. However, these traps have too much of an impact on other species in the long term.
• It is important to make sure that biological control agents are highly specific to the species that you want to target and do not affect local species.
• Asian hornets are more immunocompetent and tolerant to lab conditions than European hornets, which allows experimentation on them to be carried out over a longer period of time. (Cappa et al., 2021)
• If we were to keep hornet larvae in the lab, we would have to maintain them in the same orientation as they were in the nest, with their heads in the same position as in the comb.
• After we presented the different box designs, Federico thought the tube idea was the most promising and proposed the following improvements:
• The opening of the tube needs to be a bit larger than the diameter of the flying Asian hornet so they are not scared of entering the tube.
• There needs to be another door at the entrance that lets all insects in. Once the camera detects an Asian hornet, it should close to ensure no other insect can access the bait.
• The section of the tube where hornets feed needs to be bigger so they do not feel stressed and try to fly out immediately without getting the bait.
• There needs to be a final door that lets light in with a motion detector so the hornets are attracted to the light and leave through that door.
• He also suggested we could use bee pheromones like geraniol or sternal gland secretions of Asian hornet females to attract the Asian hornet to our box. (Cappa et al., 2019)
• Additionally, hornets perform acts of trophallaxis (mouth-to-mouth transfer), so if a hornet takes up our bacteria containing the shRNA, it could transfer it to other adult hornets.

Fun fact: If hornets are under stressful conditions, they will start taking the larvae out of their combs. Although the reason behind this behaviour is not fully understood, it is thought to be related to resource preservation.

Reflection:

Our discussion with Federico Cappa offered valuable insights into the Asian hornet's behaviour in the wild, as well as how to maintain and manipulate them in the laboratory. We learned that certain design subtleties of our box could significantly impact its effectiveness as a trap for the hornets. This information was crucial as we refined our design based on his comments. In the future, we would want to test our box in a controlled environment on a nest that has been isolated for research purposes. This would allow us to observe the behaviour of hornets live, adapt our design based on our observations, and gather more images of hornets to further improve our image recognition software.

Wanlan Li

Wanlan Li is a PhD student with a background in computer science who is now working with AI image recognition for cell-cell pairing in yeast mating in the group of Sophie Martin at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Interview with Wanlan Li.

Purpose of Meeting

We were hoping that by talking with Wanlan, we would gain useful information and insights about how to work with image recognition and what we need to consider when creating our software. We were especially interested in the feasibility of creating/modifying an AI model and we wanted to know which of our box ideas would be the easiest to implement with our software.

What We Learned:

• The first step when creating image recognition software is to make sure that you have a good dataset with enough high-quality images to achieve good accuracy.
• If you do not have a big enough dataset, you can use an existing model available or apply transfer learning to an existing model to make it more specific to your use case.
• You can also use AI models to simulate artificial images that can be used when training your model.
• The La Trompette box idea is probably the best from an image recognition standpoint as there is only one insect at a time in the box, and no other insects can fly in while the box is open. Additionally, by raising the middle section of the box, we can more easily emulate the conditions that the VespAI software had and use that to our advantage.

Reflection

After talking to Wanlan, we decided to move forward with the VespAI model and adapt it to suit our needs, rather than creating our own software from scratch. We chose this route as it solved our issues with not having a good dataset to train and validate our model, and it was also time-saving. As Wanlan mentioned, gathering data from our own box and using transfer learning on the VespAI model would be a good way to improve its accuracy.

Dimitri Wybaillie

Dimitri Wyllabie is a student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), pursuing a bachelor's degree in physics. He is also a member of the unipoly association called “Ingénieurs Engagés.” This association focuses on ecological and political engagement within the university community. Unipoly advocates for sustainable policies within the university and engages with companies to promote eco-friendly practices. They organise events supporting NGOs focused on environmental issues and aim to train future engineers at EPFL to design products with sustainability in mind. This involves creating devices that are reusable and recyclable, countering the industry trend of prioritising sales over sustainability.

Interview with Dimitri Wybaillie.

Purpose of Meeting:

Our discussion with Dimitri aimed to explore sustainable practices in engineering, particularly how we can incorporate these principles into our project. We also sought advice on how to minimise the environmental impact of our work and align with Unipoly's objectives.

What We Learned:

• Green Engineering Principles: Dimitri emphasised the importance of the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. These principles guide the design and manufacturing process to minimise energy consumption, extend the lifecycle of products, and ensure materials are recyclable.
• Challenges in Solar Panel Production: Solar panels, while beneficial for clean energy, often involve materials like silicon, cadmium, and lithium, whose extraction can harm the environment and violate human rights. Dimitri suggested focusing on reusing and recycling these materials.
• Rebound Effect: He discussed the Rebound Effect, where technological improvements might lead to increased consumption, thus diminishing environmental gains. For instance, promoting e-bikes can reduce pollution, but if their use leads to a higher overall rate of new e-bikes being bought, then the initial benefits may be lost.
• Doughnut Theory of Economy: He introduced us to the Doughnut Theory, which balances economic and social development with environmental sustainability. This model advocates for maintaining a "safe and just space for humanity" by not exceeding ecological limits.

Suggestions for Our Project:

• Reuse Old Equipment: Instead of buying new equipment or building materials, Dimitri recommended repurposing materials such as old cardboard boxes to build the prototype of our box, aligning with the principle of reuse.
• Repair Services: He informed us about EPFL’s monthly repair services, where engineering students offer to fix items, providing a sustainable alternative to discarding broken equipment or buying new equipment.

Reflection:

Our meeting with Dimitri provided valuable perspectives on integrating sustainability into our project. His insights into Unipoly’s initiatives and the challenges associated with green engineering will guide us in making environmentally conscious decisions. We plan to incorporate the principles of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle into our design process and explore collaborations with EPFL’s repair services, in order to incorporate more sustainable practices into our project. Understanding the broader implications of the Rebound Effect and the Doughnut Economy model will also help us create a project that supports both human progress and environmental health.