Descriptive Analysis of the Varroa Non-Reproduction Trait in Honey Bee Colonies and Association with Other Traits Related to Varroa Resistance

摘要

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, are currently facing drastic colony losses, some of which lies partially on the infestation by a parasite, varroa destructor. To maintain healthy honey bee colonies breeding for resistance to this infestation seems promising. However, measuring resistance is a tedious task as it is a complex process. One can consider a honey bee colony resistant to varroa infestation when the parasite fails reproducing and thus its population does not grow in the colony, this is called mite non reproduction. In this study we dissected the performance of a scoring method for mite non reproduction and compared it to other known methods to measure resistance. Although the mite non reproduction method is preferred for field studies because of its relative simplicity it appears to lack correspondence with other methods and it should be interpreted cautiously because it is variable. Even though resistance to varroa infestation is desired for breeding decision it should be done carefully when the way to measure such resistance is using the mite non reproduction method.