The Backyard Arthropod Project

I hate these soooo much . . .

This is one that, as a hobbyist beekeeper, I am all too familiar with:

This is a varroa mite, Varroa destructor[1]. They are a parasite of honey bees, derived from a parasite of the asiatic honey bee Apis cerana. The asiatic honey bee has established a stable host/parasite relationship with their strain of varroa mites, so the mites don’t wipe out their colonies. Unfortunately, the western honey bee Apis mellifera, the one that most of modern beekeeping is based on, has not established such a relationship, and if left alone these mites will wipe out a normal western honey bee colony within 1-3 years, depending on the climate. These mites got into North America (probably on imported bees, but nobody is quite sure when or where), in the early 1980s, and have come close to wiping out both commercial and hobbyist beekeeping in the US several times since then.

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Well, once again, it’s Tick Time. They hang out on tall objects (mostly dead weed stems and the sides of buildings) with their little front legs outstreched, and grab on when someone brushes past unsuspectingly. They don’t bite right away, so we usually find them when they are still crawling around looking for a place to latch on (at this time of year, every little tickle and itch becomes suspect). The ones we have around here are good old Dermacentor variabilis, which some people call a “dog tick” and others call a “wood tick”, while just about everybody calls it an “eeewwww” when they find it crawling up their leg.

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