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Flying zombies

A parasitic fly causes honeybees to turn into zombies and harms the world's bee population.

A bee controlled by a parasite. Photograph from: A, Runckel C, Ivers J, Quock C, Siapno T, et al. (2012). "A new threat to honey bees, the parasitic phorid fly Apocephalus borealis". PLoS ONE 7 (1).
A bee controlled by a parasite. Photo from: A, Runckel C, Ivers J, Quock C, Siapno T, et al. (2012). "A new threat to honey bees, the parasitic phorid fly Apocephalus borealis". PLoS ONE 7 (1).

By Dr. Daniel Mader, Angle, Science and Environment News Agency

Many have already heard about the mysterious disappearance of the honey bees (Apis mellifera) around the world in the last decade - a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder. This phenomenon is worrisome from an economic and environmental point of view because it harms global honey production, and worse - harms the pollination of agricultural crops on a significant scale. The main causes of damage to bees are climate change, parasites and problematic use ofPesticides.

Now, A group of researchers from the United States discovered a new factor And a significant one that harms bees: a parasite that turns them into zombies. Mushrooms are known in nature that turn ants into zombies. That is, causes them to change their behavior in a way that benefits the parasite. In the case of the bees, it is the zombie fly Apocephalus borealis, which lays eggs in the bees' stomachs.

Map of the distribution of the enslaving flies. Source: zombiewatch.
Map of the distribution of the enslaving flies. Source: zombiewatch.

The behavior of the bees becomes erratic: they avoid flying during the day, circle on the ground, leave their hives in the middle of the night or in stormy weather (the kind that usually causes bees to rest in the hive), and later they also die. A week after the death of the bees, the larvae of the flies hatch from the bodies of the infected bees and continue their life cycle.

In recent years, infected beehives have been discovered in dozens of sites across the US and southern Canada. There are areas where about 80 percent of the hives are infected. To track the spread of the parasitic and enslaving fly, a dedicated web page named Zombie Watch. You are invited to enter it and run away with exaggerated screams when the parasites approach your home.

Zombie bees in Canada:

4 תגובות

  1. For the opponent, it is not possible because the backward world does not allow it. But there are mice, pigs, fish... They have already been engineered, so why wait for bees to disappear and then start crying?

  2. It is interesting that until the intervention of man for thousands of years the bees were perfectly fine and prospered and suddenly we are witnessing the global extermination of the bee population. So before we start looking for blame for the situation let's look at what we did. First we placed barrels full of sugar water near the beehives to increase the yield of honey instead of the bee getting the sugars from flower nectar and thus she does not get the nutrients in the nectar only clean sugar, we really brought the spoiled western diet to the bees! And the second thing we did was take the honey to the bees so we could eat it and we gave them substitutes like corn syrup for their larvae. In light of the fact that honey is an antiseptic and corn syrup is not, this explains a lot of things.

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