This review addresses the interactions between the varroa mite, its environment, and the honey bee host, mediated by an impressive number of cues and signals, including semiochemicals regulating crucial steps of the mite's life cycle. Although mechanical stimuli, temperature, and humidity play an important role, chemical communication is the most important channel. Kairomones are used at all stages of the mite's life cycle, and the exploitation of bees' brood pheromones is particularly significant given these compounds function as primer and releaser signals that regulate the social organization of the honey bee colony. 

V. destructor shows a strong preference for drone brood. In A. mellifera carnica colonies, for example, drone brood is infested approximately eight times more frequently than worker brood (34); this preference could be due to the presence of greater amounts of attractant compounds either on drone larvae (63, 111) or in the larval food contained in such cells (89), as well as to the longer duration of the invasion period (11) and differences in the number of visits made by infested nurse bees to drone brood compared to worker brood. Conversely, queen cells are rarely invaded by mites, suggesting that these cells could be repellent to the mite.

A plethora of kairomones are used at all stages of the mite’s life cycle, but the exploitation of brood pheromones is particularly significant given these compounds function as primer and releaser signals that regulate the social organization of the honey bee colony (66) and given the implications for the possible arms race between the host and the parasite. The complexity of chemical communication between bees, which includes context dependency, not uniqueness of the response (58, 109), is also fundamental to the communication between the varroa mite and the honey bee.

Nazzi, F., & Le Conte, Y. (2016). Ecology of Varroa destructor, the Major Ectoparasite of the Western Honey Bee, Apis mellifera. Annual review of entomology, 61, 417-432.

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