See here for an introduction to colony collapse disorder and part 1 of this two-part series. Africanized bees, more often known as "killer bees," have earned notoriety as opportunistic attackers of, ...

Every year, up to half the honeybee colonies in the U.S. die. Varroa mites, the bees’ ghastly parasites, are one of the main culprits. After hitching a ride into a hive, a mite mom hides in a ...

Barbara has written professionally for more than two decades. In the past five years, she has specialized in creating real estate and home improvement content. Besides writing for Forbes Home, she ...

GREENSBORO — Honeybees pollinate crops from blueberries in Maine to almonds in California and are one of the most important pollinators in North Carolina. As a result, a global decline in honeybee ...

Researchers sequenced the genomes of the two Varroa mite species that parasitize the honey bee. They found that each species of mite used its own distinct strategy to survive in its bee host, ...

Tests with fake bee larvae reveal that a “vampire” mite attacking honeybees may not be so much a bloodsucker as a fat slurper. The ominously named Varroa destructor mite invaded North America in the ...

Among the many threats to honey bee colonies around the world, one stands alone: the parasitic mite, Varroa destructor. For decades, researchers assumed that varroa mites feed on blood, like many of ...

The Varroa destructor mite may be tiny — only a millimetre or two long — but it poses a massive threat to honey bees, beekeepers and honey producers, and agricultural sectors that largely rely on bees ...

There are plenty of hypotheses; possible causes include everything from neonicotinoid pesticides to habitat destruction to autoimmune disorders. To figure out what’s really going on, and hopefully to ...

Varroa mites – notorious honey bee parasites – have recently reached Australian shores, detected at the Port of Newcastle in New South Wales last year. If they establish here, there would be ...

A reddish-black mite the size of a tiny crumb latches onto a honeybee, feeding on its fat body and transmitting diseases as the bee struggles to survive. The Varroa destructor, an aggressive mite, ...