"Zombie" Fly Parasite Killing Honeybees
A parasitic fly landing on a honeybee. Courtesy of Christopher Quock
A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis.
Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect
in colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations,
which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential
culprit is a bizarre and potentially devastating parasitic fly that has
been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.
John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University,
had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights
around the University’s biology building. “But being an absent-minded
professor,” he noted in a prepared statement, “I left them in a vial on
my desk and forgot about them.” He soon got a shock. “The next time I
looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the
bees,” he said. A fly (Apocephalus borealis) had inserted its
eggs into the bees, using their bodies as a home for its developing
larvae. And the invaders had somehow led the bees from their hives to their deaths.
http://news.yahoo.com/zombie-fly-parasite-killing-honeybees-230200867.html
A parasitic fly landing on a honeybee. Courtesy of Christopher Quock
A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis.
Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect
in colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations,
which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential
culprit is a bizarre and potentially devastating parasitic fly that has
been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.
John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University,
had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights
around the University’s biology building. “But being an absent-minded
professor,” he noted in a prepared statement, “I left them in a vial on
my desk and forgot about them.” He soon got a shock. “The next time I
looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the
bees,” he said. A fly (Apocephalus borealis) had inserted its
eggs into the bees, using their bodies as a home for its developing
larvae. And the invaders had somehow led the bees from their hives to their deaths.
http://news.yahoo.com/zombie-fly-parasite-killing-honeybees-230200867.html
Last edited by Brook on Wed Jan 04, 2012 11:41 am; edited 1 time in total
