For those graduate students searching for a dissertation topic on bee-
biology or those bee-scientists interested conducting bee-researches, 
here, I believe, are potential topics regarding mite-transmigration:  What 
could have been the original scenario where mites “discovered” bees, for 
the first time, as a potential host and hitched a ride to a hive?  

In other words, where have they [mites] come from?  What were they doing 
before the discovery?  My suspicion is that the mites did not appear in 
hives “ex nihilo.”  More likely, they were living outside the hive, 
independent of bees, such as on a flower, eking a moderate living, sucking 
nectar and drinking dew, until they stumbled onto a niche—-a blood meal 
and a free ride to more blood meal.  And then they finally discovered that 
the flesh of the brood was more tender and juicier for their young, 
speaking anthropomorphically.  Even better, sweet-toothed Homo Erectus 
started to gather and “warehouse” their “milk-cows” in packages, helping 
mites, unwittingly, in the process.

(According to my observations, all birds, other than the well-documented 
barn/martins, will also eat drones and queens under right circumstance; 
they are, like us, opportunists.  So must have been the mites.)

My rationale is based on the well-documented observation that certain 
hummingbird species also harbor mites in their nostril, among others, for 
the aerial transportation service; these mites lurk on a nectar source, 
waiting for the opportune moment to hitch a ride, for instance:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i3/hummingbird.asp 


Given such parallel circumstance that bees also collect nectar and that 
they also harbor mites, it appears probable that the first mite might have 
hitched a ride on a bee while living on a nectar source, rather than 
vertically transmigrated (from where?).  

No, I do not think this is just another chicken-and-egg problem.

This new investigation will help us search for solitary varroa mites not 
on bees but potentially on flowers, thus opening up more controversy 
whether these mites were dropped off by visiting bees or dying and dead 
bees, or they were living independently, awaiting their chances.  Could it 
be possible that America had mites all along, but it took hundreds of 
years, since circa 1859, for the mites to figure out how to take advantage 
of the apis, for I am not sure how they [mites] came into being here, not 
the first case-identification, but the very modus operandi, about which 
little is known.  Could they have been imported not via infected hives but 
via a floral source, for example?  Such investigation will be interesting 
in that we have already identified different strains of v. mites, for 
instance.  Similarly, can we not identify mites caught in amber in South 
America and compare with modern ones since we have already identified 
ancestral stingless bee species caught in amber; I believe this study has 
already been done, perhaps.

If possible at all, one can search for mites in apis-free zones; also, why 
don’t the mites attack other species of bees to such extent they do the 
apis?  Is it a numbers game (more hosts in an apis colony than in masons 
or bumbles)?  Given nectar is such a wonderful energy source and many 
other insects take advantage of it, other nectar-sucking insects should 
harbor mites, though not identical, do they?

Regardless of the argument, such study can broaden our understanding of 
avirluence in mites, among others, perhaps shedding light in areas where 
we have not yet paid much attention to.

Thinking out loud,

ysk

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