Maybe the news about bees is scary? Previous studies have pointed to the trend of bee extinction, and more recently, there have been even more bizarre cases, and perhaps we don't know enough about this small thing as bees.
Earlier this year, a new species of bees that can eat rocks was discovered in the southwestern United States, but that's not much to say, and recently in North Carolina, bees parasitized by other insects have been found, looking like a terrible image of a "zombie bee."
This bee is found in the Appalachian Mountains. Local beekeeper Claire Kimmel said her 6-year-old granddaughter found some horrible and strange dead bees in the foyer:
"After that, we've been turning on the hallway lights. Looking again the next morning, in addition to some dead bees, there were two other animals moving around them irregularly. ”
Kimmel sent several dead bees to biologists, and it turned out that the bees were invaded by a parasitic fly, the "flea fly", which laid eggs in live bees and used them as a growth ground.
On closer observation, the larvae of this parasite will eat live bees from the inside out:
"Like other flies, butterflies and other insects, this zombie fly will undergo its biological metamorphosis after maturity. They first hatch from eggs into maggots. Maggots survive in live bees. After maggots grow to a few days old, infested bees leave their hives at night and die outside. ”
As their brains and tissues and organs are slowly nibbled by parasitic flea flies, infested bees exhibit strange and irregular behavior. The parasite forces them to leave the hive, which has led beekeepers to worry that the appearance of this zombie fly will accelerate the process of bee extinction.
Such zombie flies have only recently appeared, eroding bees, and are speculated to be a cause of colony failure disorders. Previously theory that pesticide use was the biggest threat to bees, now it seems that it is far from simple.
Resources
http://wfae.org/post/flight-living-dead-zombie-bees-are-invading-north-carolina