permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Home | ZomBee Watch
https://www.zombeewatch.org/

 ZomBee Watch is a citizen science project sponsored by the San Francisco
State University Department of Biology, the San Francisco State University
Center for Computing for Life Sciences and the Natural History Museum of LA
County. ZomBee Watch was initiated as a follow-up to the discovery that the
Zombie Fly *Apocephalus borealis* is parasitizing honey bees in California
and possibly other areas of North America. You can read or download a copy
of our original scientific 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>,
for free from PLoS One.

Honey bees infected by the Zombie Fly leave their hives at night and are
attracted to nearby lights where they become stranded and eventually die.
The presence of fly larvae in up to 18% of active foragers in some
California honey bee hives makes the Zombie Fly a potential contributor to
hive declines. This would be especially likely if Zombie Fly infection is
widespread and higher in areas that are experiencing hive declines. We
founded ZomBee Watch to find out how widespread Zombie Fly parasitism is
and to learn how often unparasitized honey bees are attracted to lights at
night for other reasons.
 ZomBee Watch has three main goals.

   1. To determine where in North America the Zombie Fly *Apocephalus
   borealis* is parasitizing honey bees.
   2. To determine how often honey bees leave their hives at night, even if
   they are not parasitized by the Zombie Fly.
   3. To engage citizen scientists in making a significant contribution to
   knowledge about honey bees and to become better observers of nature.

   There are many ways you can get involved. It can be as easy as
collecting honey bees that are under your porch light in the morning, under
a street light or stranded on sidewalks. If you are a beekeeper, setting up
a light trap near one of your hives is the most effective way to detect
ZomBees. It's easy to make a simple, inexpensive light trap from materials
available at your local hardware store. To test for the presence of Zombie
Fly infection all you need to do is put honey bees you collect in a
container and observe them periodically. Infected honey bees give rise to
brown pill-like fly pupae in about a week and to adult flies a few weeks
later. View the tutorial. <https://www.zombeewatch.org/tutorial>

A ZomBee and four emerged pupae

In California, parasitism begins to increase in early June and peaks in the
fall and early winter months. Most records of the fly from other parts of
North America (such as the Midwest and Northeast) are from late May to
September, which is the most likely time that parasitism will be observed
by citizen scientists in those areas.

Not all honey bees attracted to light produce Zombie Fly pupae. Whether or
not you find parasitized bees, we are interested in your records.


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." Read our discovery
paper<http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029639>
*A Zombie Fly laying eggs inside a Honey Bee. * The fly is native to most
of North America. It has expanded its host range to include the non-native
honey bee, the most important pollinator of agricultural crops.

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. So far, the
Zombie Fly has been 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.