Prices have soared to new records over the last couple of months. The wholesale price for a dozen white eggs climbed to over $8 in February.

Since then, that price has come down, but prices consumers pay at the grocery store are still high.

Our economics correspondent Paul Solman takes a look at what's been going on.

Egg prices, once again, no joke.

The price for a dozen eggs, up 60% in a year.

But why?

Typically some 300 million American hens lay some 90 billion American eggs every year.

Seems like enough to go around.

So why would prices suddenly take wing?

The answer appears to be the oldest cliche in economics, supply and demand. So first, supply.

It's been drastically reduced by the flu. Here's agricultural economist Jada Thompson.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza, we kind of call it

bird flu, is a disease of poultry. It leads to at least 75% mortality, and that's in chickens.

And this one is more like 90 to 94% mortality. And so you have this huge mortality, either dying from

the disease or being depopulated in order to keep the viral

loads down.

And so as of November of last year to February of this year, I think we're down 50 million

egg laying birds.

But wait, avian flu also hit back in 2015.

That outbreak was pretty much over in months.

Emily Metz speaks for the egg industry.

This virus is clearly evolving and our entire supply chain has been impacted,

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