59-05-032 Proceeding

371 Proceedings of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Congress before hatching of A. mellifera (in Thailand) host bees. Tropilaelaps mites that were sandwiched between the cocoon that is spun by the host larva and the cell wall (entrapped by the cocoon) were not found in this study. Few entrapped Varroa mites (1 - 2%) were found in unselected A. mellifera colonies, but more than 50% of mites in colonies of bees bred for suppression of mite reproduction were entrapped (Harris and Harbo, 2001). Mite Fecundity The actual reproductive rate for Tropilaelaps was calculated from reproductive mites. The number of progeny per reproductive T. mercedesae in A. dorsata worker brood was 1.3 (Table 2). The maximum number of offspring produced by a single T. mercedesae female in this study was found to be 3. This maximum number of progeny in worker brood of A. dorsata was similar to that in A. mellifera brood in the previous report by Woyke (1987). About 71.7% of reproductive mites produced 1 progeny (Table 3). 24.2% of reproductive mites produced 2, and 4.1% produced 3 progeny. These percentages agree well with the previous report by Ritter and Schneider-Ritter (1988) that 64% of the Tropilaelaps females from A. mellifera brood in Thailand had produced 1, 33% had produced 2 and 3% had produced 3 offspring. The result here showed that the number of progeny produced of reproductive Tropilaelaps mites (or fecundity) was not correlatedwith the number of non-reproductivemites in the colonies of A. dorsata .This incidence was consistent with previous reports from several researchers that the number of progeny produced by reproductive Varroa mites was independent of the frequency of non-reproductivemites in a colony (Rosenkranz and Engels, 1994; Martin, 1995). Acknowledgements We are grateful to Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University for financial support.We also thank Prof. Dr. Siriwat Wongsiri, Prof. Dr. Thomas Rinderer and Dr. Lilia de Guzman for their suggestions on research techniques. References Anderson, D.L. 1994. Non-reproduction of Varroa jacobsoni in Apis mellifera colonies in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Apidologie 25: 412 - 421. Anderson, D.L., and Morgan, M.J. 2007. Genetic and morphological variation of bee-parasitic Tropilaelaps mites (Acari: Laelapidae): new and re-defined species. Exp. Appl. Acarol. 43: 1 - 24. Boecking, O., and Drescher, W. 1993. Preliminary data on the response of Apis mellifera to brood infested with Varroa jacobsoni and the effect of this resistance mechanism, pp. 454 - 462. In Connor, L.J., Rinderer, T.E., Sylvester, H.A., andWongsiri, S. (eds.), Asian Apiculture . Wicwas Press, Cheshire, USA.