Article content continued

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

Hafernik said phorid flies are native to Canada, and have been around for thousands of years, unlike honeybees, which were introduced by European settlers.

“We’re trying to find out how big of a threat is this to the honeybee,” he said. “We know that if a honeybee is infected by the fly, it’s very likely to die.”

As a researcher of the phorid fly, Brian Brown, the head of the Natural History Museum’s entomology department in Los Angeles County, said phorids attack by laying eggs inside bees, causing larvae to grow by feeding on a bee’s body tissue. After the larvae pupates, it turns into an adult fly.

When a bee is infected with the parasite, Brown said, its behaviour becomes odd, and zombie-like.

“Worker bees kind of get stranded and disoriented,” he said. “We also find them sort of buzzing around on the ground, and not able to fly because the fly larva has eaten so much of the bee’s tissues.”

While the discovery is concerning, Hafernik said it’s not uncommon for honeybees to be infected in the San Francisco Bay area. He said a high percentage of bees in a colony can have the parasite, but doesn’t know if that’s typical in Canada yet.

“If a large enough number of honeybees get infected, that could cause a hive to either fail or become less productive,” he said. “At this point we believe that primarily honeybee workers are being infected as they go out forging for pollen and nectar.”

Wallbank hopes that by tracking her infected bees, she can help ZomBee Watch collect data about the honeybee population and prevent the parasites from spreading.

“Any bees that have been parasitized, I dispose of them,” she said. “So at least I’m taking those larvae out of the system.”