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 ...

Honey bees are more likely to thrive when their habitats include organically farmed land and flower strips , new research from Germany shows. A team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and ...

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 ...

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, ...

Where would we be (!) without bees? Bees are irreplaceable in our food chain. One out of every three bites of food that we eat have been made possible by bees’ activities – nuts, fruit, and vegetables ...

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, ...

The drastic decline in global honeybee populations is no secret. The phenomenon has been named “colony collapse syndrome,” and though it’s not clear what factors led up to it, entomologist Samuel ...

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 ...