• Health
  • Science
  • U.S.
  • Technology
  • Business
  • World
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Sports

Building a Better World

News and information

  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Our Team

Night of the living dead, zombie honeybees caused by tiny flies

October 12, 2015 By Jerry Newberry

Night of the living dead, zombie honeybees caused by tiny flies

Flies attacking honeybees adding to concerns over bee population loss.

Researchers say the already-threatened honeybee is now under attack by tiny flies that cause the bees to turn into zombie-like creatures that stagger around at night before actually succumbing to death.

Honeybees are disappearing all over the country as vampire mites and nutritional deficiencies have led to bee colonies dying out in recent years, and the zombie bee cases, a West-coast phenomenon for some time, appears to be spreading east, according to an article on foxnews.com.

Scientists believe the Apocephalus borealis fly attacks the honeybees while they are feeding, depositing eggs into the abdomen of the bee and eventually affecting the way the doomed bees behave.

Although the fly had been known to attack bumblebees and yellow jackets in the past, it wasn’t until 2008 that John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University, noticed bees that appeared to be disoriented around a light outside his office on the campus.

After collecting some of the bees for further study, he began to notice pupae coming out of a bee.  After that, there were many more reported cases of honeybee infections around the San Francisco area and surrounding areas.

In 2012, Hafernik started a project, called ZomBee Watch, designed to recruit people to look for and document cases of the fly invasion, and to upload photos of the pupae and/or the adult flies emerging from the bees.  Thus far, more than 100 confirmed cases have been documented.

The first confirmed case in the Eastern united States was in 2013, when a beekeeper in Burlington, Vermont, noticed bees behaving like zombies.  This past summer, two more cases of the infection were confirmed in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City.

Hafernik said, “We’re not making a case that this is the doomsday bug for bees.  But it is certainly an interesting situation where we have a parasite that seems to affect the behavior of bees and has them essentially abandoning their hive.”

Pages: 1 2

Sharing

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Filed Under: Front Page, Science

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Us

Facebookrss

Search:

Recent Posts

  • NASA’s InSight spacecraft makes important course correction May 26, 2018
  • Scientists outraged at latest Trump decision May 15, 2018
  • Huge uproar erupts over major incident at Utah park May 13, 2018
  • Incredible moon discovery stuns scientists May 12, 2018
  • Authorities shocked by discovery about common painkiller May 6, 2018
  • Outrageous crocodile experiment stuns scientists May 5, 2018
  • Great Barrier Reef is too quiet, scientists say May 1, 2018
  • Massive Hiroshima bomb discovery shocks scientists May 1, 2018
  • Earth will be slammed by massive asteroid April 29, 2018
  • Teens are doing something incredibly alarming in schools April 29, 2018
  • Huge discovery in Tasmania stuns scientists April 28, 2018
  • Shocking discovery in New Jersey stuns authorities April 22, 2018
  • Huge volcanic explosion could wipe out the United States April 21, 2018
  • Huge controversy erupts over world’s hottest pepper April 15, 2018
  • SpaceX is about to do something astonishing April 15, 2018

Copyright © 2021 Jones Kilmartin Group, LLC · Metro Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress