At 11/20/01 12:00 AM, Aaron wrote:
>However, queen developement is simply too quick for Varroa to be interested in inhabiting a queen cell.  I know of no documented cases of Varroa in queen cells.

Recent studies of varroa *seem* to point to the inability of varroa mites to make any assessment at all, that they are simply piggybacking to whatever locations the workers carry them. It appears that they have no way of "knowing" what sort of cell they are going in, or anything about the length of gestation etc., and end up in drone cells more because the cell is open longer than for any other reason. They certainly can't "tell" how big a drone cell is from the back of a bee (in the dark) and the notion of "odor cues" seems to be losing ground.

(source: personal discussions with researchers)

pb