Crazed "Zombie" Bees May Be Invading East Coast

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The East is being invaded by the undead -- bees.

In addition to man-made pesticides, mites and colony collapse, European honeybees in the United States are facing a new threat: parasites that quickly leave them disoriented and then dead, prompting clever wordsmiths in the media to dub the poor critters inflicted with the condition "zombie bees."

The bee population has fallen prey to the parasitic Apocephalus borealis fly, which lays its eggs inside the bees, causing them to act erratically before dropping dead once the eggs hatch, according to Zombee Watch, a citizen science project dedicated to tracking and studying the spread of infected bees and sponsored by the San Francisco State University Department of Biology, the San Francisco State University Center for Computing for Life Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Before the European bees were targeted, the parasitic flies previously only attacked bumblebees and yellow jackets, according to material on the Zombee Watch Website.

The tiny fly injects its eggs into the abdomen of the honey bee, where the eggs hatch and eat the living bee inside. After the bee dies, the new flies emerge from the bee's neck.

"They fly around in a disoriented way, get attracted to light, and then fall down and wander around in a way that's sort of reminiscent of zombies in the movies," said San Francisco State University biology professor John Hafernik, who first discovered the infected bees in California about six years ago, in a report by ABC News. "It's sort of a combination of zombies and aliens mixed together."

Infestations have been confirmed in California, Washington, Oregon and South Dakota and now, based on new reports, in Vermont -- although, according to data posted on the Zombee Watch site, there isn't yet any confirmation of wide-spread infection in the Green Mountain State.

The National Agriculture Statistics Service reported in 2008 that there were 2.44 million honey-producing hives in the United States, down from 4.5 million in 1980 and 5.9 million in 1947. The counting, however, is believed to underestimate the total number of managed hives, since the survey excluded several thousand hives managed for pollination contracts only and also didn't include hives managed by beekeepers operating less than 5 hives.