A few years back, this came out:
> This study is the first to confirm that drones present at drone congregation areas do carry Varroa.
Mortensen, A. N., Jack, C. J., & Ellis, J. D. (2018). The discovery of Varroa destructor on drone honey bees, Apis mellifera, at drone congregation areas. Parasitology research, 117(10), 3337-3339.
* However, it appears that they didn't do their homework, because varroa in DCAs had been reported 30 years ago:
> there is no essential difference between the hive bees and the flying bees in terms of number of Varroa mites. Only the water-carrying bees were considerably less infested. But in drones, the situation is different : a considerably greater number of drones in the hive were found to be infested (41.9%) as compared to the flying drones (5.2%) or the drones caught at the drone congregation area (6.1%). And consequently, the average amount of infested drones (18.2%) is much greater than that of worker bees (3.6%).
Huttinger, E., Pechhacker, H., Sulimanovic, D., & Tomac, I. (1981). Spread of Varroa jacobsoni from one colony to another. Apiacta; an international technical magazine of apicultural and economic information.
ΒΆ
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