Bee zombies appeared in America

In Washington state (USA) is a strange phenomenon: many bees in the nest have died or staggered and plunged to the ground.

Bees fly zombies all night and stagger until they die abnormally. This macabre phenomenon is appearing in Washington state (USA).'I joke with my children that the curse of the era of mobile corpses is starting to happen in my home ,' said Mark Hohn, a new beekeeper on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington state.

A few weeks ago, Hohn returned home after a holiday and discovered that many bees in his home group had died or staggered and plunged to the ground.

Hohn had heard about the zombie bee phenomenon, so he picked up some dead bees and put them in plastic bags. About a week later, Hohn found out that his bees were infected with parasites.

Biologist John Hafernik of San Francisco State University discovered the first zombie bees in California in 2008. Hafernik now runs a website to recruit ordinary scientists like Hohn to monitor this situation. across the country. Zombie bees were also discovered in Oregon and South Dakota states.

Bee infected with parasites is a new threat to plants that need pollination. The number of beehives has plummeted in recent years due to a mysterious cause that scientists call the swarming disorder , in which the honey bees mature in swarms suddenly die.

The parasite's life cycle on the bee begins when the female flies on the back of the honey bee to pump the eggs into the bee's abdomen. Their eggs hatch into maggots. These maggots eat from the inside, causing the bee to lose control and die.

After eating the host, the larvae develop into a pupil, creating a very hard outer shell, which looks like a brown rice grain. That's what Hohn saw in the bag of dead bees. After 3-4 weeks, these pupae turn into adult flies.

There is no evidence to confirm that parasitic flies are the main cause of a sharp decline in the number of bees, but it seems that the fly is looking for new host animals, said Steve Sheppart, head of entomology at Washington State University.