There's been a groundswell of 17-year cicadas in Virginia and other southern states, as revealed by a fresh wave of photos and eyewitness reports. In some areas, the outbreak has been accompanied by the insects' loud chorus call. And that's music to the ears of University of Connecticut entomologist John Cooley.

"That's where I'm heading," Cooley told NBC News. The weather is still too cool in New England and the New York City area for a full-blown Brood II emergence, so Cooley is planning a field trip to watch the insects rise up in Virginia.

This is the big year for Brood II cicadas, which are expected to emerge from the ground in the billions over an area of the East Coast ranging from North Carolina up to Connecticut. The bugs are hard-wired to spend 17 years underground, feeding on the fluid from plant roots, and then pop up during the appointed spring when the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius).

For weeks, bug-watchers have been posting their sightings (and soil temperature readings) to websites such as Cooley's Magicicada.org and RadioLab's Cicada Tracker. Another website maintained by the Sutron weather information network tracks the soil temperature in Washington, D.C. 

When the winged cicadas throng, they can cover trees and buildings — and raise a din as loud as a lawnmower or jet engine (90 decibels). Over the course of four to six weeks in May and June, the bugs mate, lay their eggs and die, setting the 17-year life cycle in motion once again. (Scientists theorize that there are evolutionary advantages to the long, odd-numbered cycle.)

Although the cicadas have been patiently waiting for 17 years, some cicada-watchers up north are getting impatient with the pace of the emergence. Cooley said the relatively slow pace may be due to this spring's cool temperatures. In order to bring the soil up to 64 degrees F, air temperatures have to get significantly higher than that on a consistent basis.

"I want 80s and 90s," he said, "and so do the cicadas."

Dave Ellis / The Free Lance-Star via AP

Brood II cicadas emerge in the Leavells Crossing neighborhood in Spotsylvania, Va., on May 16.

Carol via Twitter.com/oikwtm_

Cicadas throng near a house in Fredericksburg, Va.

Carol via Twitter.com/oikwtm_

A cat looks through a screen door as cicadas swarm outside a house in Fredericksburg, Va.

Slideshow: Return of the cicada

Take a closer look at the curious 17-year life of the flying bug as the East Coast prepares for an invasion.

Launch slideshow

More about the cicada outbreak:

• Cicadas crawling out of the ground in droves
• 'Swarmageddon' comes to North Carolina
• Bug-watchers see cicadas on the rise
• Cicada emergence sparks early buzz

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

People are getting all twitchy about the bugs that are coming out in New York and New Jersey after a 17-year buildup, but when it comes to cicadas, Billy Tesh is seeing the real deal in North Carolina.

"I was so excited," Tesh told NBC News from Greensboro, where he runs a company called Pest Management Systems. "I've never seen so many in one location in my life. They were on almost every blade of grass."

And this is just the start: Billions of the insects are due to come out over the next few weeks, across a swath of the East Coast ranging from North Carolina to Connecticut.

These particular cicadas have been biding their time underground since the Clinton administration, in 1996. For 17 years, they've been sucking up fluid from plant roots and waiting for their biological alarm clock to ring. The bugs emerge in droves when the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees.

Other species of cicadas break out from the ground every year, but scientists suspect that the 17-year cicadas (and their 13-year kin) adopted a longer life cycle as an evolutionary ploy to overwhelm their predators with sheer numbers and surprise. When the time comes, masses of insects burrow out of their underground homes, shake off the shells of their childhood, unfurl their wings and look around for mates.

This spring's group is known as Brood II — which comes between last year's Brood I in Appalachia and next year's Brood III in the Midwest.

Tesh knows all about the broods: The 53-year-old pest-control specialist has been through several invasions by the red-eyed, loud-humming bugs. Even by his standards, this year's group of cicadas is special. He realized that on Thursday morning when he stopped by a farm in Stokes County, which appears to be one of the first places to experience the full force of this spring's "Swarmageddon."

"This particular brood is extremely large," Tesh said. He's expecting the cicadas to take noisy wing in the next day or two. "They're probably singing tonight."

Billy Tesh

A cicada and its shell sit on pest-control specialist Billy Tesh's hand during a visit to a farm in Stokes County, North Carolina.

Billy Tesh

Red-eyed adult cicadas clump together in a tree in North Carolina.

Billy Tesh

Hundreds of cicadas and their shells hang from dewy spears of grass in North Carolina.

Marc Dennis

Cicada nymphs make their way along a path on Staten Island.

Judging by the reports posted on Magicicada.org and Radiolab's Cicada Tracker, lots more cicadas have been emerging over the past week or so. Sightings have been reported not only in North Carolina, but in areas as far north as New Jersey and Staten Island in New York, which are traditional stomping grounds for Brood II. Those sightings are generating lots of buzz, but University of Connecticut cicada researcher John Cooley says the bugs in the New York metro area appear to be early risers forced out of their holes by wet weather.

Cooley checked out the cicadas that were emerging at New Jersey's Cora Hartshorn Arboretum. "There are nymphs there, and there are lots of them, but I don't think they are ready to come out," he told NBC News. He doesn't expect these early arrivals to do well, and he thinks the nymphs spotted on Staten Island will be in a similar fix. The weather in the Northeast just isn't spring-like enough yet for full-scale Swarmageddon.

When Swarmageddon sets in, Easterners won't need to wonder: The bugs will cover the ground when they crawl, blot out the sky when they fly and generate a mating hum as loud as a New York subway train (90 decibels or more). After a weeks-long mating season, the adults will die off, leaving behind shovelfuls of bug bodies. Meanwhile, a new crop of nymphs will hatch out from their eggs and burrow into the dirt to begin the next 17-year cycle.

Tesh says people have nothing to fear from the cicada invasion. The insects may damage some of the plants that they crowd onto, but they also serve to aerate and fertilize the soil. He's already gotten several calls from concerned customers in the Greensboro area — but so far, no one has asked him to bring out the pesticides. Instead, everyone has been taking his advice: "Just let Mother Nature take its course."

Slideshow: Return of the cicada

Take a closer look at the curious 17-year life of the flying bug as the East Coast experiences an invasion.

Launch slideshow

More about Swarmageddon:

• Bug-watchers see cicadas on the rise
• Cicada emergence generates early buzz
• All about cicadas on NBCNews.com

Show us your cicada photos by adding #NBCNewsPics to your tweet or Instagram post, or upload your pictures directly by clicking on this box.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Almost a third of America's honeybee colonies bit the dust last winter, according to a bellwether survey of bee health. But the deaths didn't fit the typical pattern for colony collapse disorder, the mysterious malady that wipes out bunches of bees all at once. Instead, researchers suggest that last summer's drought and other common-sense factors were to blame.

The annual survey of beekeepers, conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership and the Apiary Inspectors of America, found that 31.1 percent of the colonies were lost over the winter of 2012-2013. That compares with a loss of 22 percent during the previous winter, which was exceptionally mild. It's also slightly higher than the six-year average of 30.5 percent in colony losses.

The past winter's bee death rate was roughly as high as it was during the winter of 2006-2007 — when colony collapse disorder, or CCD, was at its peak. But this time, most colonies "dwindled away rather than suffering from the sudden onset of CCD," Jeff Pettis, a U.S. Department of Agriculture bee expert who worked on the survey, said in a news release announcing the results.

University of Maryland entomologist Dennis vanEnglesdorp, who directs the Bee Informed Partnership, listed several likely causes for last winter's spike. One prime reason is the drought that swept over the Midwest last year. "When there's a drought, the bees are in poor shape with the food," California beekeeper Randy Oliver told NBC News in March.

Honeybees may have had to rely on irrigated crops rather than wildflowers for their nectar, which could have increased their exposure to pesticides, vanEnglesdorp said. He said last year's rising corn prices led farmers to replace prairie and shrubs with cornfields, further limiting the bees' foraging areas. And for part of the year, beekeepers lacked an effective treatment for Varroa mites, a type of bee parasite that was cited last week as the biggest factor behind the nation's bee die-off.

VanEnglesdorp said all these factors left bee colonies in a weakened state for the tough winter of 2012-2013. He said the beekeepers who took their hives to California in February to pollinate almond trees suffered especially high losses. Nearly 20 percent of those beekeepers said they lost 50 percent or more of their colonies over the winter.

Pettis noted that the survey stopped tracking losses at the end of April. As a result, "the 31 percent figure likely underrepresents the losses, as we saw many weak colonies that were not actually dead," he said.

Beekeepers rebuild their colonies in the spring, so a 31.1 percent loss rate isn't quite as catastrophic as it sounds. Nevertheless, vanEngelsdorp said high winter losses are changing the way commercial beekeeping is done. "All the money you're going to make in honey goes to replacing dead colonies and keeping your colonies alive," he said. "Any money you make [as profit] will be from pollination."

More about the bees:

• Die-off blamed on combination of causes
• EPA steps up pesticide review
• NBC News archive on the bee crisis

The winter colony loss survey was funded by USDA. The 6,287 U.S. beekeepers who responded to the survey managed nearly 600,000 bee colonies at the start of the survey period, or about 23 percent of the country's estimated 2.6 million colonies. A complete analysis of the survey data will be published later this year.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: Return of the cicada

Take a closer look at the curious 17-year life of the flying bug as the East Coast prepares for an invasion.

Launch slideshow

Backyard bug-watchers are seeing the winged bugs known as cicadas come out of their holes in New Jersey and North Carolina after 17 years of underground slumber — and scientists say a full-scale outbreak may not be far behind.

"There are some pretty convincing reports coming out," John Cooley, an expert on cicadas at the University of Connecticut, told NBC News. "It's fair to say it's starting, but it's still in the very early stages. It certainly isn't going all crazy. ... When it really happens, it's not going to be like this. It's going to be shovel loads of cicadas."

Cooley maintains one of the most closely watched websites for this spring's emergence, Magicicada.org. Little bug logos are popping up on different areas of Magicicada's interactive map, which means a smattering of Internet users are seeing cicadas coming out of the ground. In some cases, they're even seeing the bugs crawling around as adults.

Cooley, however, says that we ain't seen nothing yet. "When it really happens, we expect that website will just light up," he said.

The outlook is similar on other bug-watching sites — such as Radiolab's Cicada Tracker, which is encouraging listeners to put out their own soil-thermometer setups. Those readings are considered key leading indicators for cicada activity, because researchers have found that the bugs emerge en masse when the springtime soil temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius). A different temperature tracker set up by the Sutron information network for the Washington area suggests that the nation's capital still has a way to go before the cicadas come out.

Insects are expected to emerge by the billions on the East Coast, across an area stretching from North Carolina to Connecticut. This army of bugs, known as Brood II, spends 17 years feeding on plant roots underground. Sometime between late April and early June, depending on the weather, the insects burrow out of the ground as nymphs. The juveniles shed their outer skins, crawl up trees or buildings, and fly around to find their mates. The females lay their eggs, and then the adults die in droves. All this happens in the course of four to six weeks.

After another few weeks, a new generation of nymphs hatch from the eggs, drop to the ground, burrow into the soil and begin the next 17-year cycle.

Magicicada.org

An interactive map provided by Magicicada.org shows this spring's cicada sightings.

Ron Edmonds / AP

Red-eyed cicadas cluster on leaves in Annandale, VA., during the Brood X emergence of 2004. Like Brood II, Brood X comes out every 17 years - but the timing of the cycle is different.

Brood II is just one of several broods of 13-year and 17-year periodical cicadas: The last big bug outbreak featured Brood XIX, which created a huge buzz in Southern states in 2011. This year's emergence is expected to begin in the South as well, though that's not guaranteed.

"Our expectation has been that we would hear from folks in North Carolina first," said Missy Henriksen, vice president of public affairs for the National Pest Management Association. However, the only cicada sighting she's actually been able to confirm was made in New Jersey. Although the insects tend to swarm in rural or suburban areas, there's a chance they could be sighted in urban enclaves such as New York's Central Park or the Bronx Zoo as well.

Cooley said he expected the pace of sightings to accelerate in the days ahead. "Within a week or so, it ought to really be going," he told NBC News. "Spring can't hold off forever."

When it comes, a cicada emergence can fill the skies with flying bugs, and fill the ears with a hum as loud as a jet engine or lawn mower. Those who have been through the full-frontal buzz say the experience can be disconcerting if you're not prepared for it. But cicadas are not considered a threat to humans. In fact, they can be quite delicious.

For true bug fans, the best response to the emergence is to lie back and enjoy it. "I'm looking forward to it," said Cornell University entomologist Cole Gilbert, who's expecting to catch the trailing edge of the Brood II outbreak in upstate New York. "I think it's pretty cool."

More about cicadas:

• Cicada invasion generates early buzz
• In death, cicadas boost plant life
• Tasty cicadas may sicken pets

Thanks to the rapid rise of crowdsourcing and social media, this year's event is sure to become the most tweeted cicada emergence in history: Cicada Mania suggests using the hashtag #BroodII for the 2013 outbreak, and #Cicadas for general cicada issues. If you want to see the Twitterverse from the cicadas' point of view, just follow @Brood_II. There's a Cicada Mania Facebook page for entomophiles. And if you're an entomophobe, you'll find kindred spirits on the "I Hate Cicadas!!!!!!" Facebook page.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" NBC News Science's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Steve Corniffe looks at dead bees next to a bee box at the J&P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company on April 10 in Homestead, Florida. Beekeepers and scientists are trying to figure out what is causing bees to succumb to the colony collapse disorder.

This week's federally sponsored report about the mysterious disappearance of honeybees, known as colony collapse disorder, pointed to a complex combination of factors, ranging from parasitic mites to pesticides. But what are experts going to do about it? And what about the pesticides known as neonicotinoids, which are facing a ban in European countries?

In an email to NBC News, the Environmental Protection Agency says it's speeding up its schedule for reviewing research on neonicotinoids and their potential effects on honeybees. It's also fine-tuning existing regulatory practices and setting up new educational efforts to deal with colony collapse disorder. Here's how the EPA responded to NBC News' questions about the next steps to counter the honeybee die-off:

Are there any specific policy questions under consideration? Anything relating to the next steps in the wake of the report?

"EPA is working collaboratively with beekeepers, growers, pesticide manufacturers, seed manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, USDA and states to apply technologies to reduce pesticide dust drift, to advance best management practices, to improve enforcement guidance and to explore enhancing pesticide labeling in order to protect bees. Specifically, EPA is:

• Moving to change pesticide labels which will limit applications to protect bees and be more clear and precise.
• Moving to add warning statements to each bag of pesticide-treated seed.
• Issuing new enforcement guidance to federal, state and tribal enforcement officials to help them investigate bee kills.
• Working with the equipment manufacturer and pesticide and seed industry and USDA to develop and apply technologies to reduce pesticide dust drift during planting seasons.
• Working with USDA and other partners to promote Best Management Practices for growers and beekeeping via a new website, education and training modules for professional applicators, video, and other mechanisms
• Finally, EPA is working on a range of national and international efforts to develop appropriate tests for evaluating both exposure to and effects of pesticides on insect pollinators. EPA is also requiring new lab and field studies to inform the risk assessment process to better understand pollinator risks."

On the subject of nicotinoids, the EPA has said it's conducting risk assessments on the pesticides' effects, but is there anything more specific that can be said?

 "The agency has accelerated the schedule for registration review of the neonicotinoid pesticides due to uncertainties about these pesticides and their potential effects on bees. We have several hundred registrant studies addressing the effects of neonicotinoids to individual bees as well as colonies in field settings. In addition, the EPA has evaluated open-literature derived studies that meet the established standards for use in a regulatory context.

"If at any time the EPA determines there are urgent human and/or environmental risks from pesticide exposures that require prompt attention, the agency will take appropriate regulatory action, regardless of the registration review status of that pesticide."

More about the bee die-off:

• Report fuels debate over bee die-off
• Rise in bee deaths stirs up a buzz
• Neonicotinoids tied to crashing bee populations

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The U.S. government's latest report on the mysterious disappearance of honeybees points to a parasitic mite as the biggest factor behind colony collapse disorder — and downplays the role of controversial pesticides that European officials are planning to ban.

Thursday's report from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture says there should be further research into the effects of those nerve-agent pesticides, known as neonicotinoids. But it says the studies so far have not shown it to be the biggest hazard facing the bees.

Last month, beekeepers and environmentalists filed a federal lawsuit calling for an immediate ban on two kinds of neonicotinoids — clothianidin and thiamethoxam. One of the attorneys bringing that suit, Peter Jenkins of the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, told NBC News that his group was "very disturbed" by the way the report was presented, but he also said some of the problems cited in the report supported his case.

'Complex problem'
The report says that a complex combination of causes is behind colony collapse disorder, or CCD, a term that applies to the difficult-to-explain losses that have hit U.S. honeybee colonies since 2006. In the worst cases, entire colonies have disappeared within a few weeks. That's a big problem, because the government says an estimated one-third of all food and beverages are made possible by pollination, mainly by honeybees. Pollination is said to be worth more than $20 billion in agricultural production annually.

The relatively light bee colony losses during the winter of 2011-2012 gave some experts reason to hope that the CCD situation was getting better, but experts say that last winter's losses look as if they were worse than ever.

"The decline in honeybee health is a complex problem caused by a combination of stressors, and at EPA we are committed to continuing our work with USDA, researchers, beekeepers, growers and the public to address this challenge," acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe said in a statement.

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan promised that "key stakeholders will be engaged in addressing this challenge."

Scott Bauer / USDA via AP

A worker bee carries a Varroa mite, visible in this close-up view.

The report draws upon a gathering of officials and stakeholders that took place in Alexandria, Va., last October. It says that the parasitic Varroa mite is the "major factor" behind CCD in the United States and other countries. Varroa mites latch onto the bees and feed on their fluids, weakening the insects. The mites have developed widespread resistance to the chemicals that have been used to control them. The report says more attention should be given to breeding bees that can weather the mites, and notes that gene-sequencing projects focusing on honeybees as well as Varroa mites may provide fresh insights.

Beekeepers have long known about the mite problem, as well as the other causes listed in the EPA-USDA report: poor nutrition, reduced genetic diversity, the Nosema gut parasite, emerging viruses and a bacterial disease called European foulbrood. But figuring out the role played by pesticides has posed the biggest challenge for researchers as well as policymakers.

What to do?
Recent research studies have focused on the effect of neonicotinoids, a neurotoxic type of pesticide that has become widely used because they have little effect on mammals. Most of the studies suggest that the pesticides can scramble a bee's brains — but at what level of exposure?

Some say the exposure levels used in those studies may not accurately reflect the levels that bees experience in the fields. That's the tack taken in Thursday's report: "The most pressing pesticide research questions lie in determining the actual field-relevant pesticide exposure bees receive, and the effects of pervasive exposure to multiple pesticides on bee health and productivity of whole honeybee colonies," it said.

The report says residues from a different class of pesticides, known as pyrethroids, could pose three times as much risk to bees as neonicotinoids.  

The Center for Food Safety's Peter Jenkins complained that the effects of neonicotinoids were being downplayed, but he also called attention to some of the shortcomings mentioned in the federal agencies' report. "They admitted that their labeling is inadequate," Jenkins said. "They admitted that past risk assessments and data requirements were inadequate."

He said some of the proposed policy changes — including, for instance, the introduction of better equipment for coating seed corn with pesticides — would have a positive impact. "What they don't say is that it's going to take years and years to achieve those changes," Jenkins said.

Jenkins called for an immediate tightening of regulations of pesticides. "The one factor that EPA actually has control over is the one that they refuse to regulate," he said.

The EPA is working on a new round of risk assessments for pesticides, but the results of those assessments have not yet been released. Meanwhile, the agency is due to file its response to the environmentalists' lawsuit later this month. Jenkins said Thursday's report would have "no real effect" on the legal action, which could go on for years.

More about the bee die-off:

• Rise in bee deaths stirs up a buzz
• Neonicotinoids tied to crashing bee populations
• Mites and virus team up to wipe out beehives

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

After hanging around underground for 17 years, billions of flying bugs known as cicadas are due to sweep over the East Coast starting sometime in the next month. And although it's too early to predict exactly where or when the brood will appear, this spring's emergence should rate as the most closely watched bug-out in history.

"For entomophobes, this is the season of despair. For the entomophiles, this is the season of joy," said University of Maryland entomologist Michael Raupp, using highfalutin terms for bug-haters and bug-lovers.

The outbreak is expected to start in the Carolinas in April or early May, and work its way up northward to Washington, Philadelphia and New York by early June. Some observers have already reported the first signs of the emergence. The timing depends on the weather: Cicadas dig "escape chimneys" up from the ground where they've been maturing for the past 17 years — and when the temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius), that signals the insects to rise up, wriggle out of their shells, take wing and look for mates.

Be ready for the buzz
The bugs are mostly harmless to plants and humans. The worst a cicada can do is poke you with its pointy proboscis. But the 90-decibel buzz of a sky-darkening swarm can be a bit unnerving to the unprepared. Raupp recalls one harrowing tale from 1962's outbreak, when "the kids were shrieking in the playgrounds as cicadas divebombed them."

In Raupp's view, however, the pluses far outweigh the minuses. The cicada nymphs help aerate garden soil with their burrowing, and when they emerge, the bugs represent a culinary bonanza for birds and other species. (They're said to taste like asparagus. Or shrimp.)

Besides, cicadas are cool. "Without a doubt, they are a true marvel of nature and one that should be enjoyed whenever possible," Raupp writes on his Bug of the Week blog.

It's thought that the 17-year life cycle arose to keep the cicadas' predators off their game, and perhaps make the most of climatic variations. Scientists even suspect that the number 17's status as a prime number plays a role. (Some periodical cicada species emerge every 13 years, and 13 is also a prime number.)

This particular group of cicadas, known as Brood II, hasn't surfaced since 1996. But other broods have had their own day in the sun during the intervening years. The big ones include Brood X ("The Big Brood"), which last came out in 2004; and the 13-year Brood XIX ("The Great Southern Brood"), which emerged in 2011.

The buzz online
This year's brood is notable in that it should spread out over the United States' most densely populated region. Entomologists expect the cicadas to show up in the countryside, in woodsy suburbs and even in urban locales such as New York's Central Park.

The New York-based Radiolab science show is preparing for "Swarmageddon" by helping citizen scientists build soil thermometers. Readings from the "cicada detectors" are being shared via an interactive Cicada Tracker map. Meanwhile, the Magicicada website keeps up its own database of cicada sightings. That website, supported by the National Geographic Society, also provides tons of information about the species and what to do with them. (But if it's recipes you need, you might have to look elsewhere.)

Thanks to the rapid rise of crowdsourcing and social media, this year's event is sure to become the most tweeted cicada emergence in history: Cicada Mania suggests using the hashtag #BroodII for the 2013 outbreak, and #Cicadas for general cicada issues. If you want to see the Twitterverse from the cicadas' point of view, just follow @Brood_II. There's a Cicada Mania Facebook page for entomophiles. And if you're an entomophobe, you'll find kindred spirits on the "I Hate Cicadas!!!!!!" Facebook page.

Whether you're an entomophobe or an entomophile, this will all be over soon: Once it starts, the emergence typically lasts only four to six weeks — long enough for Brood II's cicadas to mate, lay their eggs, and get the next generation settled for their 17 years of life underground as root-sucking nymphs.

Slideshow: Return of the cicada

John Pryke / Reuters

Take a closer look at the curious 17-year life of the flying bug as the East Coast prepares for an invasion.

Launch slideshow

More about cicadas:

• Video: WBAL previews the bug invasion
• In death, cicadas boost plant life
• Tasty cicadas may sicken pets
• Cicada screech is actually a love song

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This past winter has been exceptionally rough for honeybees — and although it's too early to say exactly why, the usual suspects range from pesticides that appear to cause memory loss to pests that got an exceptionally early start last spring.

Friday marked the start of an annual survey that asks beekeepers to report how many bees they lost over the winter, conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership, the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The advance word is that the results will be brutal.  The New York Times, for example, quoted beekeepers as saying the losses reached levels of 40 to 50 percent — which would be double the average reported last year.

One beekeeper in Montana was quoted as saying that his bees seemed health last spring, but in September, "they started to fall on their face, to die like crazy."

Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland who is one of the leaders of the survey team, said he can't predict what the past winter's average loss figure will be. The beekeepers' reports are being solicited online for the next two weeks, and the figures are due for release on May 7.

"What I can say is, when we were in California this year, the strength of the colonies that were there was significantly lower than it was in previous years," vanEngelsdorp told NBC News. 

Pesticides at issue
That's consistent with a mysterious ailment known as colony collapse disorder, which has stirred scientists' concern for the past decade. The malady almost certainly due to combination of factors — including the Varroa mite, a single-celled parasite known as Nosema, several varieties of viruses, and pesticides. Researchers point to one particular class of pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, as a prime suspect.

Neonicotinoid-based pesticides are commonly applied as a coating on corn seeds, but the chemicals can persist in the environment. Although they have low toxicity for mammals, they've been found to have a significant neurotoxic effect on insects, including bees. Several European countries have banned neonicotinoids, the European Union has been looking at a wider ban, and the Environmental Protection Agency is considering new limitations as well. Just last week, a lawsuit called on the EPA to suspend the use of two types of neonicotinoids immediately.

Two recently published studies add to the concern: This week, researchers report in Nature Communications that neonicotinoids block the part of a bee's brain that associates scents with foods. They suggest that without that functionality, the bees effectively forget that floral scents mean food is nearby, and thus die off before they can pollinate. A study published in January in the Journal of Experimental Biology found a similar link to problems with scent-related learning and memory.

Mild winter, dry summer
Although neonicotinoids are currently front and center in the debate over colony collapse disorder, they're not necessarily the primary reason for this winter's dramatic dip in bee colonies.

VanEngelsdorp noted that the winter of 2011-2012 was easy on the bees: Losses amounted to just 21.9 percent, compared with a 2006-2011 average of 33 percent. However, the mild winter was kind to the bees' pests as well. VanEngelsdorp speculated that Varroa mites may have gained an early foothold in the hives last spring. By the time beekeepers started their treatments on the usual schedule, it was too late to keep the mites from weakening the colonies. That would help explain why the past winter's losses were worse than usual.

Scott Bauer / USDA via AP

A worker bee carries a Varroa mite, visible in this close-up view.

California beekeeper Randy Oliver, who discusses industry trends on the Scientific Beekeeping blog, said the past summer's drought was also a factor: "When there's a drought, the bees are in poor shape with the food," he told NBC News. He said he and other beekeepers predicted that there'd be heavy winter losses last July, when the scale of the drought became clear.

Heavy losses are bad news, and if bee colonies are becoming progressively weaker, that's worse news. It's not just because of the honey: The Department of Agriculture says that bee pollination is responsible for more than $15 billion in increased crop value each year. A bee scarcity increases costs for the farmers who need them for pollination, and that could lead to higher food prices. But Oliver said it's important to keep a sense of perspective about the bad news.

"The situation with the bees is not dire," he said. "The bees are doing OK. There's no danger that the bees will go extinct. ... That's just not true."

More about bees:

• Neonicotinoids tied to crashing bee populations
• Zombie bees spread to Washington state
• Mites and virus team up to wipe out beehives

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Ariel Schalit / AP

Locusts land on a sand dune in Negev Desert, southern Israel, near the border with Egypt, March 5. A swarm of locusts crossed into Israel from neighboring Egypt Monday, raising fears that Israel could be hit with a biblical plague ahead of the Passover holiday. Israel sent out planes to spray pesticides over agricultural fields to prevent damage by the small swarm of about 2,000 locusts, said Dafna Yurista, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Ministry. The ministry also set up an emergency hotline and asked Israelis to be vigilant in reporting locust sightings.

Scientists can learn a lot about the locusts swarming over Egypt and Israel just by looking at the pictures. Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, is based hundreds of miles away in Rome — but he can tell that these particular bugs may be on their last legs.

"The few good pics I have seen of the locusts show that they are a brick red rather than pinkish," Cressman told NBC News in an email. "Both colors indicate they are immature adults, but the dark color suggests they are old and tired rather than young and hungry. Hence, the infestations arriving in northeast Egypt and Israel will probably come to nothing." That's the good news. The bad news is that other locust swarms could pose a more serious threat to the region's agriculture later this year. To get the details, check out the full story in Cosmic Log.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters

A Palestinian farmer displays locusts at a farm in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, March 5. Palestinian officials said locusts had not hit Gaza in several decades and numbers of locusts that reached Gaza on Tuesday were small but the Agriculture Ministry said they have taken all necessary steps to fight it if larger numbers hit the Gaza Strip.

Amir Cohen / Reuters

A swarm of locusts fly near Kmehin in Israel's Negev desert.

Ariel Schalit / AP

A locust on a sand dune in Negev Desert, southern Israel.

More about locusts:

• Locusts hit Egypt and Israel before Passover
• Gaddafi's fall leads to desert locusts' rise
• Locusts illustrate the science of swarming

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Researchers have re-created the love song of a katydid from 165 million years ago, based on an analysis of fossilized wings found in northwest China. They say the chirp adds an aural dimension to our picture of the forests of the Jurassic Era.

"The Jurassic forest was already packed with many animals singing at night," Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a University of Bristol biologist who specializes in insect sounds, told me today. "I'm not just talking about the crickets but the frogs. That would create a noisy environment, and in a noisy environment the best way to communicate is with a single frequency, and loudly."

That assumption fits with the analysis conducted by Montealegre-Zapata and his colleagues, which appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They started with a well-preserved Middle Jurassic fossil, one of several found by Chinese paleontologists at Inner Mongolia's Jiulongshan Formation. This particular fossil revealed the wing structure for a long-extinct species of katydid, also known as a bushcricket, which has been dubbed Archabolilus musicus.

In life, the bug would have had relatively large wings, measuring more than 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) in length, with broad stripes of color. Its closest living relatives include katydids (Tettigonidae) and grigs (Prophalangopsidae).

The researchers made detailed measurements of the fossil wing's parts, including the organs that katydids use to produce their mating calls. Scientists believe that ancient katydid, like their modern-day descendants, strummed their songs by rubbing the tiny teeth of one wing against a plectrum on the other wing.

For comparison's sake, Montealegre-Zapata and a colleague of his at the University of Bristol, Daniel Robert, analyzed the wing structures of 59 modern-day katydid species. They fed all those readings and the characteristics of the insects' songs into a mathematical model. Then they looked at where A. musicus would fit in that model.

Their conclusion, based on the size of the wing and the precise spacing of the teeth, was that the Jurassic katydid would emit a steady tone at a frequency of 6.4 kHz for 16 milliseconds. That was enough information to reconstruct the sound, which you can hear by clicking on the video button above.

T.J. Walker / Univ. of Fla.

Some of the closest modern analogs of the ancient katydid known as Archaboilus musicus are in the Cyphoderris insect family. This male specimen of the species Cyphoderris monstrosa was collected in Douglas County, Oregon.

The researchers' reconstruction has the calls coming less than a second apart, because that would be the typical frequency for species of katydids that are not threatened by bats. Paleontologists say bats were not a threat to Jurassic bugs because they didn't exist during that period.

The single-tone call would have come through loud and clear to other katydids, Montealegre-Zapata said in a news release.

"For Archaboilus, as for living bushcricket species, singing constitutes a key component of mate attraction," he said. "Singing loud and clear advertises the presence, location and quality of the singer, a message that females choose to respond to — or not. Using a single tone, the male's call carries further and better, and therefore is likely to serenade more females. However, it also makes the male more conspicuous to predators if they have also evolved ears to eavesdrop on these mating calls."

His guess is that the Jurassic katydid was a nocturnal creature, since all present-day katydids that use musical calls are nocturnal. That would have kept the crickets from being picked off by daytime predators such as the feathered, flying Archaeopteryx. But Montealegre-Zapata said they may have made tasty morsels for bug-eating Jurassic mammals such as Morganucodon and Dryolestes (which could conceivably hear the cricket calls).

The findings strongly suggest that katydids were well-adapted for music-making during the Middle Jurassic, 165 million years ago. That led the researchers to speculate that the katydid's distant ancestors might have begun chirping more than 50 million years earlier, during the Triassic Period, thanks to "the formation of random teeth across several veins on the forewings, and the associated production of noisy sounds."

Reconstructing the ancient song of a katydid could also help answer questions about modern-day insect communications, Montealegre-Zapata said. There's quite a bit of variation to the chirps of katydids and crickets, as you'll find out if you listen to the audio clips on this webpage. Over time, musical bugs may well change their tune to suit their biggest fans and frustrate their worst foes.

Montealegre-Zapata said the reconstruction of the Jurassic katydid's love song "suggests the evolutionary mechanisms that drove modern bushcrickets to develop ultrasonic signals for sexual pairing and for avoiding an increasingly relevant echolocating predator — but that only happened 100 million years later, possibly with the appearance of bats."

More about prehistoric sounds:

•  Duck-billed dinos had built-in sound systems
• Fossil shows traces of first modern ears
• Listen to the music of prehistoric flutes
• Interactive: When was the Jurassic Period?

In addition to Montealegre-Zapata and Robert, authors of the PNAS study, "Wing Stridulation in a Jurassic Katydid (Insect, Orthoptera) Produced Low-Pitched Musical Calls to Attract Females," include Jun-Jie Gu, Michael S. Engel, Ge-Xia Qiao and Dong Ren.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.