I'm not 100% sure, but A. dorsata may have been brought to NA before, at
some point.  Or at least A. cerana has - maybe someone could correct me
(thanks).
 
Anyway, the single-comb nesting habit of A. dorsata/A. laboriosa poses
certain difficulties.  Getting them to nest where we would like (in a
shelter or "hive") is one thing.  Also, the honey is stored at the upper
portion of the big comb, so harvesting it usu. means destroying the lower
(brood) portion.  It would be difficult to divide a uni-comb nest, or
otherwise "manage" them as we have come to do with the European bees, or to
a lesser extent with cerana.  With A. mellifera or cerana one can remove a
number of the combs intact, since there are several within a nest.
 
There are also smaller populations in the colonies of the large bees, and
may of these colonies tend to migrate, deserting the montane nests during
the winter.
 
Management of cerana is interesting and practical, as they are quite
similar to the European bee.  At least one cerana-subspecies has larger
populations than the others, and is used for honey production and
pollination in Asia, using a sort of miniature moveable-frame hive.
 
Just where/when the transfer of varroa from A. cerana to mellifera took
place I don't know.  Evidently there were some of these colonies used in
combination and the mites eventually transferred to a new host.
 ...could someone provide a clarification on this?