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Just came across a very interesting article on varroa control in Apis Cerana. Seems the worker larvae commit virtual suicide if they are infected with varroa or damaged in any way; plus their corpses are removed much faster than the equivalent in A. mellifera. Some sort of "death scent".
Seems A. cerna larvae have developed a form of social apoptosis to prevent increase in varroa numbers. Such that no (or few) varroa breed in worker larvae, only in the limited drone brood.
A neat and effective natural control of varroa.
There has been some speculation that some of the VSH strains have lower varroa numbers than can be accounted for by their behaviour alone. Perhaps this might be part of this explanation and we should be looking for altruistic larval traits.
There is a more easily read review of this paper here.
Seems A. cerna larvae have developed a form of social apoptosis to prevent increase in varroa numbers. Such that no (or few) varroa breed in worker larvae, only in the limited drone brood.
A neat and effective natural control of varroa.
There has been some speculation that some of the VSH strains have lower varroa numbers than can be accounted for by their behaviour alone. Perhaps this might be part of this explanation and we should be looking for altruistic larval traits.
There is a more easily read review of this paper here.
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