[ExI] bees again

[BillK]

On 11 October 2015 at 19:53, spike  wrote:
> http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/10/11/tiny-flies-create-zombie-honeybees-that-take-night-flights-then-die.html?intcmp=hpbt4
>
<snip>
> Now there is a parasite that causes bees to fly at night, and to fly in
> circles around a lightbulb as moths and other bugs do.  That is crazy!  And
> a clue: what mental circuitry are moths missing that bees have, until some
> parasitic larva devours that piece of brain or somehow disables it?
>
> Furthermore: if this larva or parasite somehow causes bees to fly at night,
> that would offer a possible contribution to colony collapse disorder.  Bees
> navigate based on sight.  If a parasite wrecks that part of their brain (or
> whatever bees have analogous to our brains) perhaps they take off at dusk,
> can’t see, get lost, fly until they are forced to land by exhaustion, perish
> from exposure, remaining colony starves from loss of worker bees.
>


As the article says, this parasite was first reported over four years ago.
<http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029639#abstract0>

So if was a widespread problem there would have been many more reports
since then.
Of course. every new parasite / disease makes life harder for bees.

The ZomBee Watch project has been running since 2012, based in San
Francisco and Los Angeles. It is a citizen science project that you
might be interested to join.

<https://www.zombeewatch.org/>
A citizen science project tracking the honey bee parasite Apocephalus borealis
Help us find out where in North America the Zombie Fly is infecting honey bees.


BillK