Zombie bees leave the hive at night | Hacker News Reader

Zombie bees leave the hive at night

wtvr.com

18 pointsnarad11 comments

I've only read news about this from bad sources and this one did not clarify my misconceptions either. Someone who has read better news than I, please set me straight on this simple thing.

Are the "zombie" bees in question: 1) Undead creatures or 2) Normal bees that been infected by a parasite and acting against their nature?

In other words, is there a parasite that causes dead bees to come to life? Or is the "zombie" metaphor used to indicate that they don't really have a will and mind of their own?

I feel really stupid asking this, but all the news I've read have been incredibly badly written. You can only imagine how bad the Finnish translations of this news have been, given the quality of the original English articles.

"honey bees that have been parasitized by the Zombie Fly Apocephalus borealis." [1]

[1] https://www.zombeewatch.org/

Most surely is "2)normal bees...". Also it's written at the beginning of the article that this parasite modifies the usual habits of a bee. And also a parasite loves living bodies, because is a parasite; so the "zombie bees" is just a metaphor.

It appears to be a parasite taking control of the host.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocephalus_borealis

http://news.discovery.com/animals/parasite-bees-zombies-0105...

Thank you, sir! I feel 1000% less stupid now.

At least they avoided a 'zombees' pun. I'm not sure I could have resisted.

It's actually not an uncommon behavior for a sick bee to leave the hive. They do this so that they will die outside and protect the rest of the colony.

http://peacebeefarm.blogspot.com/2011/01/protection-by-behav...

Previously: fungus zombifies ants: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3392038 (and other stories at http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=zombie+ant&... )

Unlike the seemingly-confused bees in this story, the mind-controled ants exhibit very specific behavior, resulting in them ending up on very specific part of plant and in specific relation to sunlight and local humidity.

[edit]

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6785-11-13.pdf seems to be a shorter version of a full-lenght paper I can't at this moment.

> “If you find bees on a sidewalk, or under a street light or under your porch light, it’s real simple. You take a Ziploc bag. You put the bees in. You leave ‘em set for a week and see if anything happens,” he said.

Hell no ... I don't want to see a bag with dead bees exploding with parasitic zombie flies

The parasitic fly is native to North American and only recently started infecting honeybees, which were brought over from Europe.

Interesting. If the fly has evolved to infect bees, then it might take a while before the bees evolve resistance to it. Honey in America might be about to go up in price.

And how is the rest of the world making sure these American flies don't make it out of America?

Good questions. One problem is, that the number of races used for professional (and hobby) beekeeping is already very small. Mostly queens are selected for laying eggs for peaceful and prodcutive workers, not so much for hygiene (removing infected sisters) or defense-oriented (beekeepers don't like that) bees.

As a consequence the current races might not be able to evolve resistance so easily. Earlier efforts to breed European bees in combination with (I think) Japanese bees both imported to the Philippines led to the import of varroa destructor mites.

Man is not so lucky with his manipulation of nature, it seems. Or choose another word.

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