Good questions here!

First, this is NOT about genetic engineering--these are naturally-occurring
sequences.

>If this is such a lethal process I would have expected to be somewhere
very near 100%.

We are not talking here about feeding strong poisons.  We are talking about
trying to disrupt one or more aspects of the  mite's biological chemistry.
 There is nothing novel about RNA interference, and all organisms have ways
of dealing with it.  So not necessarily easy to simply kill a complex
organism (as opposed to simply slowing the reproduction of a virus).  The
word "lethal" is likely not the best one to use in this situation.

This paper is a big step forward, but there is a lot yet to do before we
have an RNAi mite control product available from the bee supply.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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