Mark Hohn, a suburban beekeeper outside of Seattle, says he likes to "joke with my kids that the zombie apocalypse is starting at my house." Hohn recently returned from vacation to find that his bees were in sorry shape. Most of them were dead; the rest flew in jerky, erratic patterns, then fell to the ground and flopped around.
The Kent resident, having heard of this disease and suspecting that it might be the case, performed a simple test. He put several of the bee corpses in a plastic bag and waited. Within a week he had his proof, and his suspicions were confirmed: the sick and dead bees had fallen prey to the parasitic larvae of the scuttle fly (Apocephalus borealis). Hohn's case was the first confirmed sighting in Washington state of a disease that was first identified in California in 2008.
A healthy bee spends the night tucked safely in its hive. During the day it flies in purposeful fashion, typically zipping back and forth to its food source in as straight a line as possible. So-called "zombie bees" will fly at night, and their flight seems purposeless and spasmodic. Eventually they fall to the ground and die.
