Mites and bees

A fascinating discussion with bee expert Lynn Williams about how Varroa Mite infestations kill bees. "The Varroa mite, they call them the destructors, showed up in the United States in 1981. It came out of Southeast Asia and spread worldwide. There are only two places that they don't exist and that is in Australia and a couple of countries near the central Congo section of Africa that don't have them Annette is because of the high ambient temperature for extended long periods of time. The mites can't survive in those temperatures. The mite follows the same cycle as our honeybees. The bees go out in the springtime and work pollination. They pick this mite up and it is transported back to the bee hive. The favorite place for the mite is in the hive body because that is where the queen lays her eggs. That's where the nursery bees put the appropriate amount of honey jelly in their and then cap it off so that the bee larvae can develop. The mites mate in the hive body and with the open cells, when the queen lays her eggs, the queen mite lays her eggs in there. What happens is you don't actually get a bee. You get a population of mites to the point where the mite actually attaches itself to the bee larvae for nourishment and that destroys that new bee.