> What I am saying is that this may be an example of the brood not being attractive to mites, for other reasons.  

Certainly possible- but in the case of the present study under consideration, we are talking about resistant populations which have been the subject of intense scholarly research for the past 2.5 decades, evaluated in parallel with unselected bees under similar conditions to remove confounding factors.

Additionally, all three resistant populations have shown a long association with lower mite reproductive success, to wit:

Host adaptations reduce the reproductive success of Varroa destructor in two distinct European honey bee populations - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402190/

Norwegian honey bees surviving Varroa destructor mite infestations by means of natural selection - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5659219/ 

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