ZomBee Watch

ZomBee Watch A citizen science project tracking the honey bee parasite Apocephalus borealis. There are many ways you can get involved.

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, for free on 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. 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. 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.

Learn more about ZomBee Watch from Chris Quock Join a Facebook Live session hosted by SciStarter- October 28, 1 PM Easte...
10/24/2019

Learn more about ZomBee Watch from Chris Quock Join a Facebook Live session hosted by SciStarter- October 28, 1 PM Eastern Time. Go to Scistarter.org/zombee-watch

While it seems implausible, at best, that any bee could survive in the arctic, Bolotov suggests that these bees have bee...
01/16/2018

While it seems implausible, at best, that any bee could survive in the arctic, Bolotov suggests that these bees have been evolving separately to their bee brethren, possibly as far back as 25,000 years ago.

New bee species found thriving in former Arctic nuke site A species of bee has been discovered that is miraculously

12/23/2017

Happy Holiday's from all us at Zombee Watch!

- "I never thought I would be that interested in bugs, but it’s amazing when you get outside, and actually start turning...
10/31/2017

- "I never thought I would be that interested in bugs, but it’s amazing when you get outside, and actually start turning rocks over and digging through bushes, how exciting it was actually finding a bug," Ashlei Thomas explained.

Educators returned from Big Bend with unique teaching methods.

10/27/2017

Just in time for Halloween, almost 800 Ector County Independent School District students learned about “Bees, ZomBees and Citizen Science” Tuesday at the Odessa High School Performing Arts Center from John Hafernik, professor emeritus of biology at San Francisco State University.

10/26/2017

ZomBee's, sounds like something out of a Halloween movie, but a California scientist came to the Basin to talk about unusual flies infecting bees.

Dr. John Hafernik is in Texas talking to middle and high school students. Take a listen to the podcast and let us know w...
10/26/2017

Dr. John Hafernik is in Texas talking to middle and high school students. Take a listen to the podcast and let us know what you think.

Zombees in San Francisco? These bees have their bodies hijacked and are slowly eaten from within. What can we do to protect the honeybee?

Looks like my mom is doing some Zombee Watch experiments at home. - Jonathan
10/16/2017

Looks like my mom is doing some Zombee Watch experiments at home. - Jonathan

10/08/2017
Friends, wasps can be pesky and sometimes mean! But they are important pollinator's and they can be parasitized by Ab ju...
08/31/2017

Friends, wasps can be pesky and sometimes mean! But they are important pollinator's and they can be parasitized by Ab just like Honeybee's and Bumblebee's! We talk about this original discovery by Pacific Gas and Electric in 1973 as annotated in our discovery paper.

A new citizen science survey aims to shed light on that fixture of summertime in the outdoors: the wasp.

08/06/2017

The number of U.S. honeybees, a critical component to agricultural production, rose in 2017 from a year earlier, and deaths of the insects attributed to a mysterious malady that’s affected hives in North America and Europe declined, according a U.S. Department of Agriculture honeybee health survey r...

08/06/2017

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