Swarm of 'zombie bees' believed sighted in B.C.
By Elaine O'Connor, The ProvinceSeptember 27, 2012
Al Browning, shown with his wife Marion outside of their mobile home in Surrey on Wednesday, fears zombie bees may have made their way north of the border. Photograph by: Mark van Manen , Province
Al Browning was awakened from sleep a week ago when his back porch security light started flashing wildly at 3 a.m.
It might have been an intruder, but the Surrey retiree found something even more sinister: a swarm of so-called zombie bees.
“They weren’t honeybees, they were a black bee with a white stripe, almost like a wasp,” said Browning, 87, who lives with his wife Marion in a mobile home park near Fraser Highway.
The trespassers, he said, appeared drowsy and he found several corpses on his back porch in the morning.
Neither he nor his wife were stung by the cloud of nocturnal insects, but he isn’t taking any chances.
“Since then, I haven’t turned on my lights,” Browning said.
‘ZOMBIE BEES’
“Zombie bees” are infected with a parasitic fly that causes them to fly erratically at night until they die.
They have recently been confirmed in Seattle, and earlier in Oregon and South Dakota. Browning may have made one of the first unconfirmed sightings in B.C.
The condition was first discovered by San Francisco State University biologist John Hafernik in 2008. The bees are infected when an adult female fly injects eggs into the bee’s body. When they hatch into maggots, the bee is eaten from the inside.
The spread of the infection has implications for agriculture, as it’s yet another condition, like colony collapse disorder, that puts stress on pollinators.
WAVE OF WEIRD BUGS
But zombie bees are just one of several strange new insects seen in B.C. in recent years.
Abbotsford fruit growers are also battling a new pest outbreak. The spotted wing drosophila fly is invading local orchards.
This insect uses a serrated saw appendage to cut into fresh fruit such as berries, grapes and soft-skinned stone fruits, then lays eggs in it, spoiling the harvest. Most fruit flies target only rotten fruit on the ground.
The fly is Asian in origin, and commonly found in China, but was only detected in B.C. in 2009, and the 2011 growing season saw a heavy early infestation.
INSECTICIDES APPROVED
The federal government has approved five insecticides farmers can use to protect their crops, including some varieties approved for use in organic production.
The province has been monitoring the problem and is trapping the fly to study the population.
CROPS AFFECTED
B.C. Ministry of Agriculture entomologist Tracy Hueppelsheuser, an expert in the biology and pest management of established and invasive insect species, has been studying their effect on B.C. crops.
“There does appear to be increase [in invasive insect species] over the past few years,” Hueppelsheuser said, blaming the increase in globalization and international trade and travel for the spread. “These insects are hitchhikers.”
APPLE MAGGOTS
The entomologist has also studied the apple maggot, which was first introduced to B.C. in 2006 by way of Washington state and has since spread across the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island.
To date, it hasn’t crossed into the Okanagan, a region that grows more 90 per cent of all B.C.’s apples, a crop worth $130 million a year. Public information campaigns warning visitors against bringing outside apples, pears or plums into the area aim to keep it away.
EUROPEAN FIRE ANTS
Then there is the discovery of the invasive European fire ant in North Vancouver in 2010. Residents reported aggressive ants there swarming and stinging. Thompson Rivers University entomologist and ant expert Robert Higgins identified them as the Myrmica rubra species.
It was the first time the ants, which prefer warm wet habitats, had been documented in B.C.
But Hueppelsheuser assumes they’d been here for longer.
“What tends to happen with invasives is you don’t detect them for a really long time until their populations start to increase significantly,” she said.
Clusters have since been found in Burnaby, Vancouver and Victoria.
STINK BUGS NEXT?
Now, Hueppelsheuser is on the alert for a new insect: the brown marmorated stink bug, which spoils fruit, vegetables and wine grapes by piercing them, sometimes leaving a lingering odour on produce.
It’s been found in other parts of Canada and the U.S., and she’s worried it could soon cross into our province.
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Insects+Look+zombie+bees+other+bugs/7304346/story.html#ixzz27uXLyszm |
