A novice bee keeper from Washington state began to notice strange and unusual behavior from bees around his home that sparked his curiosity.

The first sign that something wasn’t right was the surprise pile of dead bees on his door step when he returned home from a vacation. He blew them off with a leaf blower thinking nothing of it.

The next sign happened in the bee keeper’s shop. He noticed a few bees that were flying around a light in “jerky patterns” then dropping to the floor. The bee keeper heard of zombie bees before so he put some of the corpses in a Ziploc bag. Weeks later several pupae were in the bag thus confirming zombie bees.

Explanation

The zombie bees were first discovered in California some time in 2008 by John Hafernik, a biologist at San Francisco State University.

Bee zombies are the result of a parasitic fly (smaller than a fruit fly) that lands on the back of the honeybee to inject eggs into the bee’s abdomen. Affected bees are described to hang out around lights during the night and “lurch around erratically” before they die, which is why they’re  called zombie bees.

The eggs hatch inside the bee, giving life to little maggots that eat the insides of the bee. After the host is fully consumed the maggots pupate or transform, developing an outer shell much like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, just different.

This apparently poses no threat to humans but wasps and other bees can be affected as well.

Source: Seattletimes.com