Welcome to the world of Dr. Zac Lamas. I am a researcher who studies virus transmission in honey bee colonies (Apis mellifera). I approach all of my research questions from the perspective of a behavioral ecologist. I want to know how behaviors of the host or the vector can drive viral transmission. My studies are not only important for beekeepers, and understanding social insects, but also broadly to understand how pathogens affect social behavior.

Most students take a gap year before graduate school. I took a gap decade. During that twisty, turny time my life took me across the United States. I ran a bio-dynamic farm; milking cows and pasture raised poultry for CSA members. I managed fine dining restaurants at luxury hotels, and spent winters roofing houses in North Carolina. And during most of that time I spent years up and down the east coast of the United States producing and selling thousands of honey bee colonies and queens. Ultimately all these experiences coalesced when I decided to go back to school. I wanted to pursue a PhD while answering one question: How can relatively few mites kill a populous honey bee colony?

After 10 years out of academia I was a very unlikely PhD candidate, but my findings overturned decades of research about Varroa and the honey bee, and led to new methods to study honey bees.

My work continues as a post-doctoral research at in the Evan’s Lab in Beltsville, MD at the USDA-ARS Bee Research Laboratory. Using functional genomics my work will attempt to link behaviors with the gene’s and pathogens that regulate them.