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Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) is a behavioral trait of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in which bees detect and remove bee pupae that are infested by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. V. destructor is considered to be the most dangerous pest problem for honey bees worldwide. VSH activity results in significant resistance to the mites.
Varroa destructor, the Varroa mite, is an external parasitic mite that attacks and feeds on honey bees and is one of the most damaging honey bee pests in the world. [2] [3] A significant mite infestation leads to the death of a honey bee colony, usually in the late autumn through early spring.
Some honey bees strains have been bred to be resistant to Varroa, [21] [22] through Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) behavior, enabling them to detect reproducing varroa mites and diseased pupae within capped cells, which are then uncapped and the pupae removed.
Russian honey bees have been proven to be more than twice as resistant to various parasitic mites than other honeybees. [8] This strain occurs in the original native range of the Varroa mite , and selective pressure could have favored bees that exhibited aggressive behavior against colony-level mite infestations.
Varroa destructor and V. jacobsoni are parasitic mites that feed on the fat bodies of adult, pupal and larval bees. When the hive is very heavily infested, Varroa mites can be seen with the naked eye as a small red or brown spot on the bee's thorax. Varroa mites are carriers for many viruses that are damaging to bees.
The Bee Research Lab at Central State University led by Dr. Hongme Li-Byarlay [8] has studied the grooming and mite-biting behavior and selected mite resistant stocks since the fall of 2017 and discovered that morphological changes in the bee mandibles may explain the better mite-biting behavior in the breeding stocks. [9]