[FairOpinion]

WOW!

Thanks for the details. I had no idea a mites are such horrendous problem and that it's so difficult to get rid of them.

I hope they'll be able to eradicate them.

Bees are one of the most useful creatures on earth.

Since you are so knowledgeable, do you know, how this started and became so wide spread?

[WorkingClassFilth]

Most opinions are that these mites have always been in the background - in other nations. Other species have adapted to cope, but European bees went with European settlement. As a result, many areas of the world had a bee-mite arrangement with their native bees, but the European bees were not part of it. At some point, mites jumped the species barrier and began to travel the world within strains of the European. It is suspected that tracheal mites may have been part of some European problems for nearly 100 years. The 'Isle of Wight' disease written about in period bee literature is one clue. In any event, the mites have made serious inroads into the defenseless Europeans and have hoboed, hopped freighters and been inadvertently smuggled all over the globe.

In the US, European bees have been part of our ag picture since the 1500's and about 90% of our pollination used to come from 'wild bees' (really escaped swarms of European bees raised by beekeepers). The reservoir of wild bees simply dwarfed anything going on commercially. Today, scientists consider ALL wild colonies extinct and any out there are only a few years old at the most - doomed too. It can be seen, then, that the unknown arrival of the various mites may have been at work in the vast populations hidden in the wilds and spilled over into commercial enterprises well into their colonization of this continent.

Australia and NZ have fought valiantly to protect their populations against the mites, but I just read that the NZ beekeepers have finally been found to have at least one of the mite infestations.