The Australian funnel web spider could turn out to be the good guy in the global fight to save the humble honey bee.

As scientists around the world battle to establish why entire bee colonies are dying off, research by Australian biochemist Glenn King has established that some ingredients found in funnel web venom are harmless to honey bees.

The results open the door for the development of targeted pesticides using a selection of "bee-friendly" compounds found in funnel web venom, which is also harmless to birds and mammals.

Insect and spider pests destroy approximately 15 per cent of the world's food supply. Bees, however, are vital not just to the honey production industry; they pollinate almost 65 per cent of horticultural and agricultural crops produced in Australia.

Professor King from the University of Queensland identified the venom compounds while working at the University of Connecticut between 1999 and 2006. No small task, given funnel web spider venom contains 3000 different compounds. Just one of those compounds was fatal to humans.

"It's an incredible, complex chemical cocktail that the funnel web spider throws at its insect prey to disable it," Professor King said.

The key to designing a bee-friendly pesticide was identifying compounds which were lethal to common agricultural pests but harmless to bees and mammals.

Professor King also had to analyse how the compounds lethal to pests worked and their 3D structure. This knowledge means that a synthetic version of the funnel web spider venom can be made in commercial quantities.

"It wouldn't be possible to milk funnel web spiders and get the quantity of venom we need," he said.

US-based start-up Vestaron Corp, founded by Professor King, will produce the pesticide to be known as Spear. Having secured approval from the US Environmental Protection Authority, the first batch is expected to hit the market by the end of this year.

The peptides do not affect bees, birds or fish because they are species which do not carry the receptor the insecticide needs to enter cells, according to the company's website which states spiders produce up to 20 million distinct peptide toxins.

One of the world's deadliest spiders, the funnel web is a medium to large type found across eastern Australia.

Several of the 40 known species have fast-acting, highly-toxic venom - among them the Sydney funnel web spider, which is responsible for all 13 recorded deaths.

Along with pests like the varroa mite and poor food quality, pesticides are considered a prime contributor to the loss of bee populations globally, known as colony collapse.