SF State researchers new find may help understanding of ‘colony collapse disorder’

SAN FRANCISCO — Honey bees can become the unwitting hosts of a fly parasite that causes them to abandon their hives and die after a bout of disoriented, “zombie-like” behavior, San Francisco State University researchers have found.

The phenomenon, first observed on the SF State campus, may help scientists learn more about colony collapse disorder (CCD). This mysterious ailment has drastically increased honey bee colony losses across the United States since its discovery in 2006.

So far, the fly parasite has only been found in honey bee hives in California and South Dakota, said SF State Professor of Biology John Hafernik. But the possibility that it is an emerging parasite “underlines the danger that could threaten honey bee colonies throughout North America, especially given the number of states that commercial hives cross and are deployed in,” Hafernik and colleagues write in the January 3, 2012 issue of PLoS ONE.

Hafernik, who also serves as president of the California Academy of Sciences, didn’t set out to study the parasitized bees. In 2008, he was just looking for some insects to feed the praying mantis that he had brought back to SF State’s Hensill Hall after an entomology field trip. He scrounged the bees from underneath the light fixtures outside the biology building.

“But being an absent-minded professor,” Hafernik joked, “I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them. Then the next time I looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the bees.”

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