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Saturday, February 8, 2014

bees join-in the zombie apocalypse

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/120925/zombie-bees-are-the-first-insects-join-zombie-apocalypse

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029639

https://www.zombeewatch.org/

You can see that now there's a website tracking the "progress" of the parasatizing fly.  It's my understanding that the first notice of this parasite goes back to 2008 ish?  One of the "symptoms" the bee expresses - it leaves the hive at night and "heads to the light" (literally).  Dead honeybees can be found dead on the ground under the outside light the next morning.  Some of the earlier things I read seemed to indicate that the honeybee was not this fly's first choice of host - it actually was a problem for bumblebees. But with the decline in bumblebees and other native pollinators....it's jumped ship.

ok - I know what you're thinking.  Won't survive THIS Wisconsin winter.  so - Where do your packages come from this spring? (every spring?).  This is yet another "issue" with the commercial movement of bees....I think this is just the beginning.

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