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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • NOVEMBER 2016
Zombie bees not so scary
Media hype is an overreaction by TAMARA LEIGH
NANAIMO – It might sound apocalyptic but the discovery of “Zombie flies” in honey bees on Vancouver Island is causing more hype than harm for BC bee colonies.
Zombie flies are not a major threat to BC bee hives. (Photos courtesy of Tugwell Creek Honey Farm) PRO GLIDE NEW
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In August, a Nanaimo-area bee keeper raised the alarm after she found the first confirmed case of parasitic forad flies in Canadian honey bees. John Hafernick is a biologist from San Francisco State University and director of
ZomBeeWatch.org, a website that tracks the spread of parasitic flies that have become widely known as “Zombie flies” in North America. “This is a native fly that people have known about since 1924 but before this, we have only seen it in bumble bees and native wasps. It is much more recent in European honey
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bees,” says Hafernick. The fly is distributed from the southern US to
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Fairbanks, Alaska and is now been found in honey bees
across North America. They lay eggs in the abdomens of their hosts while they are out foraging. When the larvae hatch, they consume the bee from the inside out and then discard the spent host. Infected bees become increasingly disoriented as the eggs hatch and will often leave the hive at night and fly erratically around lights.
While the forad fly may be becoming more prevalent, commercial beekeepers on Vancouver Island have bigger issues to deal with.
“It’s another issue that beekeepers need to be aware of but we are more concerned about small hive beetle and varroa mite,” says Bob Liptrot of Tugwell Creek Honey Farm & Meadery in Sooke. “The bigger issue is bees and pesticides, but that’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.” A veteran beekeeper, Liptrot says honey bees are becoming more susceptible to parasites and pathogens when they are stressed by exposure to pesticides. The persistent movement and migration of commercial bee colonies also contributes to the spread of disease.
“We move bees around, and with the bees go all the nasty little bugs and germs they carry. That’s going to spread forad flies way faster than they could on their own,” he says. “This is not another varroa mite calamity. They are just another annoyance in the background and they are probably here to stay with the climate change that we are experiencing.”
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