[ExI] bees again

[spike]

This article really freaked me outwardly:

 

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/10/11/tiny-flies-create-zombie-honeybees
-that-take-night-flights-then-die.html?intcmp=hpbt4

 

Nearly 40 years ago, I got a call just as I was going to bed.  A beekeeper
friend told me a bee truck had overturned on an entrance ramp just south of
Jacksonville Florida and if I could be ready to roll in 15 minutes, I could
earn 5 bucks an hour from the time we left my house to the minute I
returned.  This being nearly twice the minimum wage at the time, and about 3
hrs of that would be sitting in a truck, my response was: I will be out
front in my bee suit by the time you get here.

 

Bees rely on their vision to fly.  We set up some floodlights so we could
see what we were doing, cleaning up wrecked hives and such, but the bees
never took flight, even toward the floodlight.  They know the difference
between a bright light and the sun.  Bees will not fly at night, but they
will crawl and they damn will sting, which was a bad thing: they walked
along the beekeepers suit until they could find any entry.  I made 5 bucks
an hour that night but only 2 bucks per sting.

 

Now there is a parasite that causes bees to fly at night, and to fly in
circles around a lightbulb as moths and other bugs do.  That is crazy!  And
a clue: what mental circuitry are moths missing that bees have, until some
parasitic larva devours that piece of brain or somehow disables it?  

 

Furthermore: if this larva or parasite somehow causes bees to fly at night,
that would offer a possible contribution to colony collapse disorder.  Bees
navigate based on sight.  If a parasite wrecks that part of their brain (or
whatever bees have analogous to our brains) perhaps they take off at dusk,
can't see, get lost, fly until they are forced to land by exhaustion, perish
from exposure, remaining colony starves from loss of worker bees.

 

spike 

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