a randy oliver snip... 
I do not understand the logic behind the above claim.  The rate of mite
population increase (the r value) is greatest when the ratio of drone and
worker brood to the adult bee population is at its peak.  By the time that
the mite population has increased to the point that within-cell competition
among mites is occurring, the resulting r value decreases, due to poorer
per-mite reproductive success.  It is of course slightly more complicated,
but the foregoing generally apply.

my comments...
I guess for details you could ask folks at the Baton Rouge Lab who presented this idea some years ago.  Perhaps their thinking has changed about varroa but the basic idea was not all varroa females are the same and the real problems arrises when you have a large numbers of multi ovulating females.  In terms of population dynamics it is one thing for a varroa female to simply replace itself but quite another when she produces X number of females.

Gene > Central Texas  

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