Re: How Apis cerana coexists with Varroa

From what I gather, there isn't really one thing or another that
cerana does; it is a suite of behaviors that cerana AND varroa perform
so that one doesn't wipe the other out. It is a classic parasite
relationship which has the hallmarks of living together for a very
long time. Perhaps our bees could develop such a relationship as well,
given a few eons. But we aren't planning to wait around; that is what
animal husbandry is all about -- making things happen.

As to why varroa wasn't noticed until 1904, beekeeping in Asia was
just beginning to be modernized at that time. Varroa had never really
been a problem for Asian beekeepers, and beekeeping had been fairly
primitive in any case, consisting of various styles of frameless
hives. They had mainly to deal with somewhat more serious pests such
as "spiders, ants, snakes, birds, bats, and foxes" (see ref).

Chinese beekeepers did not realize that the queen was female until
1760. Until the 20th century, a typical Chinese beekeeper had ten
hives and got an average of ten pounds of honey per year from each.
The native bee, Apis cerana, was traditionally thought to consist of
only three types: A. c. cerana, A. c. japonica, and A. c. indica. By
now, at least 8 sub-species of A. cerana have been identified and
several other species of Asian bee have been distinguished (A.
koschevnikovi, A. nigrocincta, A. andreniformis).

The varroa mite was observed in China in the 1930s but the primary bee
was Apis cerana at the time and it was not considered harmful to that
bee. From 1928 to 1932, China imported 300,000 colonies of Italian
bees from Japan. This was not an immediate success, however, as they
established apiaries in and around cities where there wasn't adequate
forage and soon had huge problems with brood diseases.

Beekeeping shifted to Western honey bees in the fifties, and went from
500,000 hives in 1949 to 2,000,000 by 1959. Then, varroa became an
very serious problem. In the 1960s, tropilaelaps followed and from
then on, bee hives had both mites to contend with. My source claims
mites were brought under control in the 1970s, using a variety of
chemicals.  China's use of harmful chemicals in food products is
widely known.

ref: "Apiculture in China" Beijing, 1993

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