I realize that Bee-L has been busy lately and the topics range far and wide afield, but this particular item caught MY notice. I have always thought that there were issues of cell size and development time involved in explaining why varroa do not thrive in Apis cerana colonies, but it appears that other factors are far more important. In fact, cell size and development time may have nothing at all to do with differential varroa reproduction. 

> Investigating the observation that V jacobsoni are rarely to be found in sealed A cerana worker brood cells, we artificially infested worker and drone brood cells containing spinning 5th instar larvae with female V jacobsoni mites collected from newly sealed A mellifera worker brood cells. 

>Highly selective hygienic behavior was  observed in A cerana bees towards dead sealed drone and worker brood. In the removal response to freeze-killed worker brood, A cerana workers uncapped 98.3% of the cells and removed 81.5% of the sealed dead worker brood within 24 h (table IV). After 41 h all dead worker brood had been removed. 

> Unlike the fast uncapping and removal response towards dead sealed worker brood the A cerana workers took 5 days to remove 25% of the freezekilled sealed drone brood, and after 13 days only 34.7% of the dead sealed drone brood had been removed.

[They seem to be far more diligent about caring for worker brood than drone brood, essentially ignoring the drone brood and the varroa mites in it. Following this, it would appear that having almost NO drone brood would have a profound advantage in curtailing varroa mite reproduction]

SEE: Response of Apis cerana Fabr towards brood infested with Varroa, by W Rath & W Drescher. Apidologie 21 (1990)

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