A comment about varroa mites was left on my last post. Here are my replies to this comment…
“There has been no time for natural selection to evolve a response to varroa – which is why it kills our colonies.”
This is an interesting question…do honey bees need to “evolve” a response to varroa, or do they already have an instinctive response to the varroa mite? It seems that some bee strains do indeed have an instinctive response to the varroa mite, and this genetic trait can be passed along to other strains through selective breeding.
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The Bee Space 