USDA did not provide comment on its research to Science after multiple inquiries spanning nearly 3 weeks, with one spokesperson citing a need “to move [the request] through agency clearance.”
How fun.
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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They rushed into action how exactly? It's been known and reported for multiple years. The Varroa management book discusses their ability to develop resistance to chemical treatments.
Whole section on managing potential resistance and rotating active ingredients used in control. That information was published in 2022. I can't tell if it is just government bodies trying to give credit for their earlier work to new people/incompetence by the administration to not already have that information or who knows what
https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/resources/varroa-management/
(Sorry, bothered me because I remembered reading about them when I was contemplating getting bees, but I put them off because I wanted to make sure my chickens were doing well and not get my hands to full all at once.)
Perhaps the point here is not the mites ability to resist but the fact the surge in bee deaths was caused by mites.
I think there's an element of media click bait and finger pointing to funding cuts to sell an otherwise mediocre story.
On miticide resistance from 2001. Looking at what's required to keep resistance down... can't see how that could have been achieved without heavy regulation, and the US is all outta regulation.
Mite-specific pesticide resistance. Last line of defense. Hmmmm. Seems fine.
My state went "oopsie!" in the news a few times after deaths directly from mosquito spraying. Somehow all manner of wasps abound.
It should be noted that most wasps are vital pollinators
Isn’t that only because other species have dies off and they filled the void?
Nope, there are thousands of native wasp species in North America. Most of them are small, have no stinger, and are vegetarian. You might glance at them and think they're flies. There are tens of thousands of plant species that rely on them for pollination.
Honey bees, on the other hand, are actually invasive in North America after they were imported from Europe.
Wasps are super important, besides the direct pollinators there are those that parasitize various caterpillars, including invasive ones. I do as much as possible to make wasps at home in my area.
Are red wasps, yellow jackets and whatever those black ones with green stripes? The red wasps are not as aggressive as yellow jackets. Not sure about the green on black ones, they've only shown themselves to me recently and I'm not trying to get close enough to fafo.
They are! Those are all paper wasps, which feed on nectar in addition to other insects, like caterpillars.
I bet they have a nasty sting. Do they also bite ~~line~~ like yellow jackets?
Many paper wasps have very painful stings. Red hornets and yellow jackets are just two species of paper wasps
The varroa mite has been blamed for years. It's been a growing issue for decades. And scientists found out in the 80s and 90s that you can use formic acid to treat for them, instead of any commercial miticide.
Interesting. Wikipedia says formic acid can kill the queen, and lists other treatments, some of which are apparently more effective.
6 months later? They've been working on the die-off issues for the last decade, if not longer.
At least a decade. I did a small module at uni about a decade ago on colony collapse disorder and varroa mites were a prime culprit, alongside various viruses. Plenty of research already done then, but no concrete answer at that time.
This is hardly news per se, rather a typical attention grabbing media headline saying that they came to a conclusion what the cause was last year after 6 months, whilst blaming cutbacks.