honey bee on flower.jpg

A healthy honeybee is shown in this file photo. However, some honeybees are being infected by a parasite that takes over its body, making it zombie like. (The Associated Press)

(The Associated Press)

So-called "zombie bees" have been found in Oregon.

A parasite that takes over a honeybee's body has been infecting pollinators along the west coast and beyond, according to researchers. The fly causes a bee to leave its home at night and walk around unbalanced and disoriented, like a zombie might, before it dies.

The fly parasite called Apocephalus borealis lays its eggs in a living bee, turning the insect into a host for its offspring. The eggs hatch and the maggots start to feed on the inside of the bee. Within a week, they emerge from the bee and ultimately, the bee dies. The parasite is also known to infect bumblebees.

An entomologist at San Francisco State University first noticed the zombie bees on campus in 2008, according to the New York Times. The bees would oddly leave their hives at night, head toward a light fixture, drop to the ground and and stumble around before dying.

To see if the bees were infected beyond the San Francisco area, researchers put out a call for "citizen scientists" to collect bees in jars, watch for parasitic flies to emerge from the bee and then submit photos. The ZomBee Watch site is a hub for the project, and shows where zombie bees have been registered nationwide.

Zombie bees have been discovered in a handful of Oregon locations, according to an infection map on ZomBee Watch. Roughly four infected bees were found in both Aloha and Tigard. Two were found in Portland and one in Corvallis. Bee sampling is in progress in other cities, and in some cases collected bees were not found to be infected.

Infected bees have also been registered in states including Washington and California, along with Vermont, New York and Pennsylvania on the east coast.

Understanding bee infection and parasites may shed light on the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder, scientists say. With the syndrome, adult bees abandon hives, leaving behind the queen bee, honey and and immature bees. Beekeepers started reporting unusually high losses of hives in 2006, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Information on how to get involved with the zombie bee research is available here.

--Laura Frazier

503-294-4035

Got a tip about science? Email me: lfrazier@oregonian.com