A Varroa Mite Nimbly Infests a Foraging Honey Bee on a Flower

An eyeless parasitic Varroa destructor mite can be seen detecting the arrival of a foraging honey bee, turning towards her, traversing the flower petal and mounting the bee, and then scrambling to the space between the abdomen and thorax of the bee, possibly to avoid being groomed off before the bee returns to her hive. This is a sample video from a study conducted at Cornell University by David T. Peck, Michael L. Smith, and Thomas D. Seeley in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Much more information is available in the peer-reviewed paper, which is freely available to the public through the Public Library of Science (PLOS) journal system: Peck DT, Smith ML, Seeley TD (2016) Varroa destructor Mites Can Nimbly Climb from Flowers onto Foraging Honey Bees. PLoS ONE 11(12): e0167798. doi: A story about this research appeared in the Cornell Chronicle on December 15th, 2016: