03183naa a2200265 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001902200230006002400310008310000160011424501280013026000090025850009910026752013700125865000190262865000220264765300130266965300220268265300210270465300220272570000150274770000240276270000190278677301120280510637962022-11-29       2022    bl uuuu     u00u1 u    #d  a2306-7381 (online)7 a10.3390/vetsci91105962DOI1 aMENDOZA, Y.  aA reciprocal transplant experiment confirmed mite-resistance in a honey bee population from Uruguay.h[electronic resource]  c2022  aArticle history: Received 8 September 2022; Revised 19 October 2022; Accepted 25 October 2022; Published 28 October 2022. -- Corresponding author: Invernizzi, C.; Sección Etología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República, Iguá 4225, Montevideo, Uruguay; email:ciro@fcien.edu.uy  -- Funding: This research was funded by the Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (INIA), grant number PF10, and the Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (ANII), grant number POS-NAC-2013-1-12259. -- Supplementary materials can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/vetsci9110596/s1 -- Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). -- This article belongs to the Collection One-Health Approach to Bee Health (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/vetsci/topical_collections/one_health_bee )  aABSTRACT.- In the past few years there has been an increasing interest for the study of honey bee populations that are naturally resistant to the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor, aiming to identify the mechanisms that allow the bees to limit the reproduction of the mite. In eastern Uruguay there are still bees resistant to mites that survive without acaricides. In order to determine if the differential resistance to V. destructor was maintained in other environments, a reciprocal transplant experiment was performed between the mite-resistant bee colonies and the mite-susceptible bee colonies from the east and the west of the country, respectively, infesting bees with local mites. In both regions, the mite-resistant colonies expressed a higher hygienic behavior and presented a higher phoretic mites/reproductive mites and mites in drone cells/mites in worker cells ratio than the mite-susceptible colonies. All the mite-susceptible colonies died during fall-winter, while a considerable number of mite-resistant colonies survived until spring, especially in the east of the country. This study shows that the bees in the east of the country maintain in good measure the resistance to V. destructor in other regions and leaves open the possibility that the mites of the two populations have biases in the reproductive behavior. © 2022 by the authors.  aAPIS MELLIFERA  aVARROA DESTRUCTOR  aGrooming  aHygienic behavior  aMite infestation  aMite reproduction1 aSANTOS, E.1 aCLAVIJO-BAQUETT, S.1 aINVERNIZZI, C.  tVeterinary Sciences, 2022, volume 9, issue 11, 596. OPEN ACCESS. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci9110596