> "A mated female mite enters the brood cell a few hours before it is
> capped. ... She begins to lay single eggs at intervals of about 30 hours.
> ... The first egg develops into a male, the remainder become females with
> which the male eventually mates, inside the capped cell. ... Male mites
> never feed or leave the cell and presumably die after the bee emerges."
 
It seems surprising to me that people took Ifantidis' study (1983) as
"definitive" regarding mite reproduction.  His assertion that the second
egg laid was male introduced drastic errors into the calculation of mite
development time.  It was not until 1989 when Rehm and Ritter did
cytological studies that it was found the first egg usually was male.
 
I believe that a lot more work needs to be done in mite reproductive
physiology.  Basing broad ecological concepts on current information could
lead to serious mistakes.
 
 
Paul Cheng
Graduate Student
 
Ifantidis, M. D. (1983)  Ontogenesis of the mite Varroa jacobsoni in worker
        and drone honeybee brood cells.  J. Apic. Res. 22(3): 200-206.
Rehm, S.-M. and Ritter, W. (1989) Sequence of the sexes in the offspring
        of Varroa jacobsoni and the resulting concequences of the
        calculation of the developmental period. Apidologie 20: 339-343.
 
--
Paul C. Cheng               [log in to unmask]      "The French find my music
Dept. of Entomology         [log in to unmask]   beyond their powers of per-
Univ. of California, Davis  pccheng!ucdavis          formance." L. van Beethoven
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