RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: It's Halloween, so it's prime time to hear from a California biologist who studies an otherwise obscure subject.</s>JOHN HAFERNIK: From time to time, I give talks, and I call it The Flight of the Living Dead.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: John Hafernik of San Francisco State studies the zombie fly. It lays eggs inside a honeybee turning the bee into a zom-bee.</s>JOHN HAFERNIK: Flying out of their hives at night, a time when bees shouldn't be active, coming to lights and then flying around in a really disoriented kind of like zombie-like fashion.</s>RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: The parasite was first observed on the West Coast during studies on declining bee populations. And now, there are zom-bee sightings as far east as Pennsylvania.
Biologists are reporting signs of a possible zombie apocalypse. Well, at least for the honeybee population. A parasite that has been turning bees on the West Coast into zombie-like creatures has started infecting bees in the East, and biologists are still puzzled as to how it all works.