> The thing that is most amazing to me is that it's taking this long for researchers to learn the basic biology of this economically-important parasite.<
It's not surprising to me. A tiny mite that reproduces inside a box; a box with no light by which to see, and most of the life cycle occurs under capped cells. How does one observe the natural behavior of tiny mites in this situation?
Any observations of mite behavior have had to be made using techniques, such as removing frames, or using glass hive walls, that could very well affect mite behavior. Again, it's almost impossible to observe them in situ, inside the core of a multi-frame brood nest, inside a box with virtually no or very little light in the center of the nest.
That may change with new technologies. Our medical surgeons and some other professions now have and use extremely tiny cameras. Fiber optics can provide tiny lights. I'm waiting for the video of mites inside a cell with a tiny camera/light affixed to a capping.
Which reminds me, I finally ran to ground the Combplex folks, the spin-off firm from Cornell, that has the camera/laser system to zap mites on living bees. I have asked them to come to MT in July for the 4th International Bee and Hive Monitoring Conference and Technology Demonstration Field Camp. I want to see this technology in action.
The other is the BeeHome with hives in a stand, loaded with sensors, communications, and a robotics system to exam the frames with bees.
I thought our LIDAR bee mapping systems, training bees to find landmines and other things, and smartphone acoustic apps were radical, disruptive technologies. If these two companies can pull off their objectives, I'll be impressed. They embrace the DARPA attitude, big risk, big payoff, if it works.
Again, following the DARPA model, not many of the initial high risk projects result in the innovation as orginally envisioned, but some aspects of those noble efforts do continue and lead to unexpected breakthroughs. I always think to the project that put us on the moon - it was a voyage of discovery, but many of the discoveries came from figuring out how to get to the moon and back.
Jerry
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