Forager Bees and the Verul Parasite

The verul parasite enters the colony by hitch hiking on forager bees who have come into the hive from outside. It needs to enter the brood cells in order to reproduce, and then it can start multiplying in the cell while the larva is developing. Researchers wanted to see if the bees had a way of preventing the mite from reaching the core. They studied two common activities: waggle dances and algromming. And what did they find? Thei results were pretty striking. In their verfree group, without the mite, waggle dance occurred all throughout the hive. But in the infected colonies, most of the waggling occurred just near the entrance of