When honey bees get sick, their beekeepers turn to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis lab for help. That ...

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 ...

Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers. In April, ...

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 ...

A tiny foe threatens Australian beekeepers’ livelihood, our food supply and the national economy. First detected in New South Wales in 2022, the Varroa mite is now established in Australia. The ...

Tropi’s natural host is the giant honey-bee (Apis dorsata), common across South and Southeast Asia. At some point, the mite jumped to the western honey-bee (Apis mellifera), the species kept by ...

Beyond a chain link fence littered with abandoned trolleys, seagulls swoop and ships the size of small cities stacked high with containers dock at Port Melbourne. It's here that Joe Riordan performs ...

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 ...

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 ...

For decades, beekeepers have fought a tiny parasite called Varroa destructor, which has devastated honey-bee colonies around the world. But an even deadlier mite, Tropilaelaps mercedesae—or "tropi"—is ...