I'm confused!
Varroa jacobsoni is a parasitic mite of honey bees genus Apis. A colony
of bees can be infested with varroa. Varroa can trigger or possibly be a
vector for viral diseases and maybe others. Heavy infestations of varroa
or tracheal mites separately or together can have a dramatic effect upon
a bee colony, the so-called parastic mite syndrome,PMS. But, varroa
infestation in itself is not a disease.
So can our bee scientist colleagues answer the following:
1. Is it correct to describe this infestation with an --osis word?
2. If so which of the following (all found on the web and in
literature)is correct?
varrosis
varroosis
varroasis
varroaosis
varroatosis
The latter would seem to be correct, if in fact it is correct to use an
--osis word at all. I note that most professional sites never use any of
the above terms.

An additional query:
3. Apiservices - Virtual Beekeeping Gallery: in a taxonomy dictionary
refers to the western honey bee as
Apis mellifica, mellifera (?)
My understanding is that the species name mellifica has long been
oudated and that mellifera is the species name that is now accepted. Is
this correct?

Cheers Tony Morgan
--
Anthony N Morgan,
Førsteammanuensis
Institutt for Elektroteknikk
Høgskolen i Sør-Trøndelag
N-7004 Trondheim, Norway
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Tlf. 73 55 96 04
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