What is a characteristic of the vision of varroa?
- It is close to that of the bee, with perception of ultraviolet.
- It is close to that of the human, with perception of red.
- It is absent: varroa has no functional eyes.
- It is achromatic, limited to white, grey and black.
Show answer
Correct answer: 3.
It is absent: varroa has no functional eyes.
Why?
Varroa is blind. Unlike the bee, it therefore does not orient itself by means of a vision of shapes or colours. Its parasitic effectiveness rests rather on other senses, in particular the perception of chemical signals, of contacts and of movements in the colony.
What to understand
Varroa is a mite very well adapted to life in the hive. It attaches itself to the adult bees during the phoretic phase, then joins a brood cell before capping in order to reproduce there.
Its lack of vision therefore does not prevent it from finding its host or from detecting the conditions favourable to its reproduction. It exploits above all the highly structured environment of the colony: contacts with the bees, odours, signals from the brood and dynamics of the hive.
Key points
Varroa does not see the bees: it detects them in another way. This adaptation explains in part why this parasite can move effectively within the colony and colonise the capped brood despite the absence of functional eyes.