DIY Science: Zombees
Channel: Skeezix Chaco
Date: 2012-10-22

We need your help finding out where honey bees are being parasitized by the Zombie Fly and how big a threat the fly is to honey bees. The Zombie Fly was first found parasitizing honey bees in California and South Dakota. We are teaming up with citizen scientists (like you!) to determine if the fly has spread to honey bees across North America.

What are ZomBees?
They are honey bees that have been parasitized by the Zombie Fly Apocephalus borealis. Fly-parasitized honey bees become "ZomBees" showing the "zombie-like behavior" of leaving their hives at night on "a flight of the living dead."
Zombee Watch
https://www.zombeewatch.org/
Paper: "A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis"
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029639
Honey bee colonies are subject to numerous pathogens and parasites. Interaction among multiple pathogens and parasites is the proposed cause for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a syndrome characterized by worker bees abandoning their hive. Here we provide the first documentation that the phorid fly Apocephalus borealis, previously known to parasitize bumble bees, also infects and eventually kills honey bees and may pose an emerging threat to North American apiculture. Parasitized honey bees show hive abandonment behavior, leaving their hives at night and dying shortly thereafter. On average, seven days later up to 13 phorid larvae emerge from each dead bee and pupate away from the bee. Using DNA barcoding, we confirmed that phorids that emerged from honey bees and bumble bees were the same species. Microarray analyses of honey bees from infected hives revealed that these bees are often infected with deformed wing virus and Nosema ceranae. Larvae and adult phorids also tested positive for these pathogens, implicating the fly as a potential vector or reservoir of these honey bee pathogens. Phorid parasitism may affect hive viability since 77% of sites sampled in the San Francisco Bay Area were infected by the fly and microarray analyses detected phorids in commercial hives in South Dakota and California's Central Valley. Understanding details of phorid infection may shed light on similar hive abandonment behaviors seen in CCD.
FaceBook
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