Nw. Calderone et H. Shimanuki, DISTRIBUTION OF THE TRACHEAL MITE, ACARAPIS-WOODI, AMONG THE MESOTHORACIC TRACHEAL TRUNKS OF THE HONEY-BEE, APIS-MELLIFERA, Experimental & applied acarology, 17(9), 1993, pp. 663-672
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.