Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...DEAR JOAN: In the past month I have come out in the morning to find bees dying on my front porch. It’s in one area, fairly close to the porch light. Nothing has changed on my part.
I checked in with people who have bees and one suggested it might be the light they are attracted to. I turned the light off and it seemed to help. I changed the bulb to an amber yellow bug light. That worked for a couple days, but they are back.
I don’t want the bees to die and am looking for answers.
— Midori, Oakland
DEAR MIDORI: Bees, like all living creatures, have a natural lifespan, and they also sometimes become exhausted and simply don’t have the energy to make their way home.
However, finding dead or dying honeybees with such consistency is an indication that something else is responsible.
Hives can become infested with Varroa mites, which infect the bees with flight-robbing viruses. Pesticides can also kill bees, slowly weakening them until they die.
In your case, I think a parasitic fly (Apocephalus borealis) is most likely to blame. The flies, popularly known as zombie flies, lay eggs inside the abdomen of bees. When the baby zombies emerge, the bees become disoriented, transforming them into zombees.
The infected bees will leave the hive, either because the other bees force them out or because they make the sacrifice to keep the rest of the hive from becoming infected. Weakened, perhaps unable to fly and definitely disoriented, the theory is that they are drawn to lights.
The flies, which are found throughout North America, prefer bumble bees, but they also parasitize honeybees and paper wasps. The only verified cases of honeybee zombees have been in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, South Dakota and Vermont. There have been confirmed cases in Oakland.
You can become a citizen scientist and report your sightings by joining ZomBee Watch at www.zombeewatch.org.
DEAR JOAN: For the last few years, we’ve had a pair of doves that nested on a flat part of our front porch pillar. It’s high, near the roof and sheltered under the eave. They have had two or more broods during the year and we enjoy watching the birds grow and fly away.
This year, they returned to the nest in the spring and within a week, something tore it down. We saw no signs of eggs. Just this week, they returned, rebuilt the next and the next day it was lying at the base of the pillar. We enjoyed watching the rebuild and were looking forward to their next brood. Again, there were no eggs. Needless to say, we’re crushed.
What could be destroying their nest? We have rat mitigation around the house. Squirrels? Other birds? Is there a way to prevent this?
— Marilyn, Martinez
DEAR MARILYN: While mourning doves are great parents, they are horrible nest builders, and gravity paired with wind might be responsible for the nest failures. With no eggs, other critters probably wouldn’t be interested in it.
You can help by securing a shallow box on the pillar, or stapling hardware cloth cones on fences or trees, which provide a more stable base for the doves to build in and on.
The Animal Life column runs on Mondays. Contact Joan Morris at AskJoanMorris@gmail.com.