Zachary Huang

Zachary (formerlly Zhiyong) was born in China and obtained his B.Sc. there. His Ph.D. was on honey bees from University of Guelph (supervised by Prof. Gard Otis). He worked on juvenile hormone and division of labor with Prof. Gene Robinson for many years before having his own lab at MSU. Zachary is known to many beekeepers and the general public by his website, www.cyberbee.net which receives over 6 million hits a year. Many of his honey bee photographs have appeared on the covers of Bee Culture, American Bee Journal and scientific journals. Newer photos are shown on www.beetography.com. Zachary invented the “Mitezapper” which uses electricity to generate heat to kill varroa mites on a drone frame. This product should be available to beekeepers May 2010. Zachary, in collaboration with Prof. Ke Dong, was the first to clone and sequence a Varroa mite gene encoding the sodium channel and published 5 papers in this area. Zachary also works on varroa mite reproductive biology in collaboration with scientists in China. He is a member of the recently funded USDA-CAP consortium which deals with colony collapse disorder in the U.S.