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Why are male varroa mites rarely seen on adult honeybees?
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colony collapse disorder
A western honeybee (Apis mellifera) forages in Italy.
Male varroa mites are rarely seen on adult honeybees because they spend their entire lives within the brood cells of the hive. Unlike female mites, which have a phoretic stage where they travel on and feed from adult bees, male mites remain exclusively in the brood area to mate with female mites before dying shortly after mating.1