TimV
Puritanboard Botanist
I was working the bees today and I thought I'd show you all one of the little mites that are the cause of the honeybee population decline over most of the world over the last 15 years or so. This is a baby drone, or male bee, and the mites suck on them like a tick on a dog. They vector all sort of diseases, cause deformities and generally weaken the bees so that they're more susceptible to other problems. It's called Varroa destructor, and it originally fed only on another species of bees in Asia, but somehow or another got over here and developed a taste for honeybees, which don't have much in the way of resistance to it. Something so small has caused billions of dollars of damage, and it just goes to show how powerful the Curse really is.
It's shaped like a little red sea creature, and if you look close you can see the grasping legs they use to attach themselves to bees when they land on flowers. They then get taken back to the hive, and breed during the bee's larval stage.
It's shaped like a little red sea creature, and if you look close you can see the grasping legs they use to attach themselves to bees when they land on flowers. They then get taken back to the hive, and breed during the bee's larval stage.