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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
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Wed, 4 Mar 2020 10:06:56 -0500
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Way more than you wanted to know:

Varroa mites become sexually mature immediately after the last molt. Males reach maturity before the females and stay at the fecal accumulation site, waiting for the first adult female which molts to adulthood some 20 h later. As reproduction can only occur inside the brood cell, males start mating as soon as the female arrives (Donzé et al., 1996).

Before copulation starts the male cleans his chelicerae. At the beginning of the mating, the male touches the female with his first pair of legs and ascends her dorsum. He then examines the frontal margin of the female’s dorsum and slips to the ventral side. Young females facilitate this action by lifting their bodies. In the venter-to-venter position the male searches for the gonopores (which are separated from the genital opening where the eggs are delivered) of the female which are located transversely between the third and fourth pair of legs (Alberti and Hänel, 1986; De Ruijter and Kaas, 1983). Then he takes the spermatophore out of his genital opening and transfers it into the gonopore of the female by means of the chelicerae. Within 2 days after insemination, the roundish prospermatozoa migrate into the spermatheca and change to a fusiform shape.

Multiple mating is common until the next daughter female is mature and arrives on the fecal accumulation site. To fill the spermatheca with up to 35 spermatozoa several matings are needed (Donzé and Guerin, 1994; Donzé et al., 1996). The mating behavior is initiated by female sex pheromones (Ziegelmann et al., 2008). Due to these volatile pheromones, young freshly molted females are significantly more attractive than older females or deutochrysalis (Fahle and Rosenkranz, 2005), which ensures that the male copulates with the youngest female until the next deutochrysalis molts to the adult stage.

P. Rosenkranz et al. / Journal of Invertebrate Pathology 103 (2010) S96–S119 S101

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