Zombees!

Zombees! I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

It seems that zombies are everywhere these days. They even have their own TV show. Dr. Steve Sheppard, an entomologist with WSU says zombies are even infiltrating the bee world.

SHEPPARD: The recent discovery about a year ago of a phorid fly, a little fly that’s native to North America and its normal hosts are bumble bees and wasps. It’s a little fly that lays its eggs inside the body of the bee. You know grabs onto the abdomen, leaves its eggs through the little soft area between the hard plates on the abdomen down into the body of the bee.

As the eggs grow they essentially cannibalize the bumble bee from the inside out killing the host. Sheppard says there has been a change.

SHEPPARD: About a year ago this fly as discovered infesting honey bees. So honey bees aren’t native, they are an introduced species and so it was kind of a host shift for this fly. And it was discovered down around San Francisco and found it also in Oregon recently now in Washington and I believe in a couple of upper midwest states as well.

The next question that comes to mind is will that affect the already threatened honey bee population?

SHEPPARD: We don’t have any evidence that it affects colony health in the larger scheme right now. The bees that are being infested are foraging honey bees and honey bees have an age based division of labor and only near the end of their life do they become foragers.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.