Parasitic Flies: Correlation with CCD

[MrILoveTheAnts]

A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis

This is a correlation! The flies life cycle with CCD seem to match up. And in at least one location in the US there looks to be great enough a population to do significant harm to hives.

Basically they cause infected bees to continue flying around after dark. Normally they use bumblebees as hosts but they've been found to have a liking for honeybees too.

(Do not confuse these Phorid Flies with the ones being imported to control fire ants. The common name can be used for some 3,000 or more species the world over. All of these tend to specialize in a particular host species, genus, or group.)

[Lone]

Oh no, not another bee killer.  I don't know a lot about CCD Mr Ant...over what period of time does a CCD affected hive die out?  Does it occur over a long enough time frame that such a parasite might be the cause?  I don't remember reading this in the report - are ALL bees in a fly affected hive infected?  And similarly, do all bees in a CCD affected hive die?

I hope they've finally found a or the cause of CCD, although it's not so great if it ends up being a sneaky little fly.  I guess we'll hear more about this.

I'm becoming more glad that they stopped bee and used gear imports into Australia, albeit too late to stop a lot of diseases, but maybe there should be more restrictions on bee movements across countries and within countries.

Lone

[SEEYA]

According to the article; this parasite is a NATIVE specie.

Three hundred years (M/L) of interaction and NOW there is a problem?
Possibilities:
1) natural predators of these Phorid Flies have been adversely affected by something
2) these  Phorid Flies have recently evolved into honey bee parasites

3) (Do not confuse these Phorid Flies with the ones being imported to control fire ants.)
    There was an old lady that swallowed a bird, how absurd she swallowed a bird?
     She swallowed the bird to catch the spider .......  

>>>I'm becoming more glad that they stopped bee and used gear imports into Australia
  If only we (USA) could be so smart; we love to import problems!

[BlueBee]

Oh great, just what we need another parasite! 

Here I thought I would only have to worry about parasitic wasps attacking my silk moths  :(

[AllenF]

The fly may have lived side by side with bees for the past 300 years, but with evolution and finding more honey bees packed together in larger yards, they are now living off the honey bee.

[Stromnessbees]

This parasitic fly has got absolutely nothing to do with CCD.

It's just a media hype and another red herring story, put out to distract from the real reason for CCD, neonicotinoids.

Don't you think all these scientist who examine CCD hives wouldn't notice those little flies crawling out of the bees?

They affect a few bees at a time, no way can it explain the disappearance of whole colonies at once.

 :roll:  :roll: