On NPR the other day, All Things Blathered About had an interview with Professor I. Noalot
teaching at Ikincee U. He said he may have discovered the cause of the hive collapse phenomena.
He had been finding a large number of honey bee carcasses under street lights. Honey Bees not being nocturnal,
he became curious about what could be causing them to leave their hives at night and be drawn to the lights.
During his investigation, he discovered tiny maggots crawling on the carcasses of newly expired bees, in sealed containers.
The maggots were allowed to gestate, and they were identified by an entomologist buddy of his, as being a tiny fly
with a sharp thingy used to inject the microscopic eggs of it's parasitic larvae between the plates of the bees' exoskeleton.
He surmises that, in the later stages of gestation, as the bee is dying, the larvae are causing the bees to leave the hive
at night and seek out light, as a moth to a flame, possibly explaining how an entire hive can disappear over night.
I found the interview quite interesting but I guess not interesting enough to remember his name or where he teaches.
