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Natural control for bee pest

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Title Natural control for bee pest
 
Creator Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
 
Description Natural chemicals that draw the parasitic mite, Varroa, away from worker bees have been identified, and French scientists have isolated these chemicals from substances taken from bee larvae.



Varroa jacobsoni has been spreading throughout the world since 1968 and has destroyed hundreds of thousands of honey bee colonies.



The parasitic mites cling to the bees and suck out body fluids. This weakens the bees and shortens their lives. At the moment acaricides keep Varroa partially under control, but there are harmful side affects. Control is made more difficult because female mites spend some time in sealed bee larvae cells where they proliferate.



The researchers found that the female mites are drawn to the bee larvae by a chemical attractant, and it is this chemical that has been isolated. In preliminary trials compounds containing the chemical attractants made the mites leave their hosts when they fell to the hive floor where they were easily caught and destroyed.



There are good prospects that the chemical could be used by beekeepers to control the pest with a product harmless to bees.



Laboratoire de Neurobiologie Compar?des Invertebres - INRA-CNRS - 91440

Bures-sur-Yvette

FRANCE
Natural chemicals that draw the parasitic mite, Varroa, away from worker bees have been identified, and French scientists have isolated these chemicals from substances taken from bee larvae. Varroa jacobsoni has been spreading throughout the world...
 
Date 1989
2014-10-08T13:16:04Z
2014-10-08T13:16:04Z
 
Type News Item
 
Identifier CTA. 1989. Natural control for bee pest. Spore 24. CTA, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
1011-0054
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/45179
http://collections.infocollections.org/ukedu/en/d/Jcta24e/
 
Language en
 
Relation Spore
 
Rights Open Access
 
Publisher Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
 
Source Spore