Zika and Beekeeping in the United States

I've recently been reading up (as I'm sure many have) on the mosquito-borne Zika virus and have been considering the impact from the perspective of a beekeeper. Why bring it up in relation to beekeeping? Because we already, at present, deal with fairly extensive mosquito spraying for other health and safety reasons, including West Nile. There is an interesting research paper by Bogoch et al. that contains this figure:

Indeed, with changes in climate, our proximity to wetlands (along the Wasatch Front, the back valleys, and the Cache Valley - where I happen to keep bees), we could also be subject to seasonal occurrences here. If you take a look at the map, you can zoom in on the Utah area and see that modeling already predicts suitable habitat to support an outbreak around the Great Salt Lake.

The full article is here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673616000805

This will bring additional required spray instances to many who keep bees should the outbreak spread into these seasonal mid-latitude regions.


Another interesting graphic:

Data curated by HealthGrove