Beekeepers:
In reply to Peter Borst's recent post, Stephen Pernal gave a presentation
at Simon Fraser University in BC last March on his work with varroa and
odors. I see in the current edition of Canadian Beekeeping he presented his
results again at Beaverlodge. Here is what the magazine says: "Using an
ingenious choice test where mites are forced to walk in the direction of
odours coming from two different arms of a 'Y' tube, Steve has discovered a
number of bee extracts that attract and repel mites and has begun
identifying active molocules that could be used in a commercial trap." On
another note: the Webster & Delaplane book: Mites of the Honey Bee (p. 140)
shows in the chart that even if the mite entered a queen cell at the same
time a queen deposited her egg, the offspring would only develop into a
single female Deutonymph and single Protonymph. The male would make it as
far as the Deutonymph stage. As Aaron Morris points out, it would be
impossible for reproduction to take place within a queen cell. So, I
suppose the mites I discovered on my newly emerged queens had simply
transferred from other bees. That isn't to say, though, that mites don't
occasionally enter queen cells as the post from BeeCrofter points out.
Regards,
Dick