Managing the parasitic honey bee mite Tropilaelaps mercedesae through combined cultural and chemical control methods

Abstract

The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is severely impacted by the parasitic Tropilaelaps mercedesae mite, which has the capacity to outcompete Varroa destructor mites (the current leading cause of colony losses) and more rapidly overwhelm colonies. While T. mercedesae is native to Asia, it has recently expanded its geographic range and has the potential to devastate beekeeping worldwide if introduced to new regions. Our research exploited the dependence of T. mercedesae on developing honey bees (brood) by combining a cultural technique (brood break) with U.S. registered chemical products (oxalic acid or formic acid) to manage T. mercedesae infestation. To evaluate this approach, we compared four treatment groups: (1) Brood Break; (2) Brood Break + Formic Acid (FormicPro®); (3) Brood Break + Oxalic Acid dribble (Api-Bioxal®); and (4) untreated Control. We found that the mite infestation rate of worker brood in Control colonies rose from 0.4 to 15.25% over 60 days, whereas all other treatment groups had infestation rates under 0.11% on Day 60. Mite fall assessments showed similar results, whereby Control colonies had 15.48 mites fall per 24 h on day 60 compared to less than 0.2 mites for any other treatment group. Evaluation of colony strength revealed that Brood Break + Formic Acid colonies had slightly reduced adult honey bee populations. No treatment eliminated all mites, so additional measures may be needed to eradicate T. mercedesae if detected in countries that do not currently have T. mercedesae.