DISTRIBUTION OF THE TRACHEAL MITE, ACARAPIS-WOODI, AMONG THE MESOTHORACIC TRACHEAL TRUNKS OF THE HONEY-BEE, APIS-MELLIFERA

The selection of honey-bee tracheal trunks by host-seeking tracheal mi tes, Acarapis woodi, was examined in 307 samples of worker honey bees. The number of bees with 0, 1, and 2 infested tracheal trunks was dete rmined for each sample and compared to an expected distribution based on the assumption that the probability that a tracheal trunk is infest ed is the same for all tracheal trunks. A Monte-Carlo simulation techn ique was employed to evaluate the significance of the test statistic. Observed distributions of bees with 0, 1, and 2 infested tracheal trun ks were found to differ significantly from the expected distributions in 74 of the 307 samples. There were more uninfested bees and bilatera lly infested bees than expected in all 74 cases. Further analysis reve aled that the left and right tracheal; trunks were equally likely to b e infested.