Sentinel sites, where problems can be identified early or investigated in detail, form an important part of planning for exotic disease outbreaks in humans, livestock and plants. Key questions are: how many sentinels are required, where should they be positioned and how effective are they at rapidly identifying new invasions? The sentinel apiary system for invasive honeybee pests and diseases i...

The unexplained collapse of honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies across the world continues to fascinate both the scientific and mainstream media alike. This is mainly due to the worldwide importance of honeybees in ecological and commercial sectors. We recently reported how the ectoparasitic mite, Varroa destructor, altered the viral landscape in the Hawaiian archipelago by decreasing the viral ...

The ecto-parasitic mite Varroa destructor has transformed the previously inconsequential Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) into the most important honey bee viral pathogen responsible for the death of millions of colonies worldwide. Naturally, DWV persists as a low level covert infection transmitted between nest-mates. It has long been speculated that Varroa via immunosuppression of the bees, activate ...

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) larvae reared in vitro were exposed to one of nine pesticides and/or were challenged with the parasitic mite, Varroa destructor. Total RNA was extracted from individual larvae and first strand cDNAs were generated. Gene-expression changes in larvae were measured using quantitative PCR (qPCR) targeting transcripts for pathogens and genes involved in physiological proce...

Aggregations of 27 nm virus-like particles were observed in electron microscopy images of sectioned Varroa destructor mite tissue. The scattered occurrence of individual particles and accumulation of the virions in lattices in the cytoplasm gave an apparent indication that the virus replicates in the mite. Sequence analysis of the RNA of the purified virus revealed a genome organization with hi...

Field trials were conducted in Northeast Spain (Aragón) to evaluate the effectiveness of two acaricides against Varroa destructor. These experiments took into account the season of the year, apiary, colony, and developmental state and strength of the colony. The acaricides used were a synthetic (amitraz, Apivar®) and a natural (formulated from Api Life Var®, thymol oil and thymol alcohol) produ...

Pesticide resistance is the ability of a pest to survive normally lethal rates of a pesticide. The ability to develop resistance to a wide range of pesticides is a widespread phenomenon among the mites, so it was almost inevitable that varroa would become resistant against the commonly used acaricides such as the pyrethroids, taufluvalinate (Apistan) and flumethrin (Bayvarol). Studies found tha...

The effectiveness of the Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschinkoff) Qu-M845 isolate was evaluated in laboratory and field trials. It was previously selected for thermal resistance (at 30 and 35 oC) and pathogenicity on Varroa destructor (Anderson and Trueman). In the laboratory, the first evaluations were carried out by spraying and increasing the concentration from zero to 108 conidia mL-1 on varro...