I've only read news about this from bad sources and this one did not clarify my misconceptions either. Someone who has read better news than I, please set me straight on this simple thing.<p>Are the "zombie" bees in question:
1) Undead creatures or
2) Normal bees that been infected by a parasite and acting against their nature?<p>In other words, is there a parasite that causes dead bees to come to life? Or is the "zombie" metaphor used to indicate that they don't really have a will and mind of their own?<p>I feel really stupid asking this, but all the news I've read have been incredibly badly written. You can only imagine how bad the Finnish translations of this news have been, given the quality of the original English articles.
Previously: fungus zombifies ants: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3392038" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3392038</a>
(and other stories at <a href="http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=zombie+ant&start=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=zombie+ant&...</a> )<p>Unlike the seemingly-confused bees in this story, the mind-controled ants exhibit very specific behavior, resulting in them ending up on very specific part of plant and in specific relation to sunlight and local humidity.<p>[edit]<p><a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6785-11-13.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6785-11-13.pdf</a> seems to be a shorter version of a full-lenght paper I can't at this moment.
> <i>“If you find bees on a sidewalk, or under a street light or under your porch light, it’s real simple. You take a Ziploc bag. You put the bees in. You leave ‘em set for a week and see if anything happens,” he said.</i><p>Hell no ... I don't want to see a bag with dead bees exploding with parasitic zombie flies
<i>The parasitic fly is native to North American and only recently started infecting honeybees, which were brought over from Europe.</i><p>Interesting. If the fly has evolved to infect bees, then it might take a while before the bees evolve resistance to it.
Honey in America might be about to go up in price.<p>And how is the rest of the world making sure these American flies don't make it out of America?