# Is this my first Varroa? (or not?)



## Jeffzhear (Dec 2, 2006)

From my recollection, that doesn't look like the ones I have seen, so I would say not...
Will be interested to see what others write.


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## newbee 101 (May 26, 2004)

not even close...you wont find them crawling around the ground.....
Get a screened bottom board, if you want to see mites


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You already have your first Varroa, you just haven't seen it yet.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Look for dark reddish-brown "specks" on sticky-board. Varroa are about the same color as a "dog tick" and about the size of a "flea".


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## Black Creek (May 19, 2006)

may be a spider mite. they are very bright red. if it is a spider mite, it was just there by chance. they feed on plants.


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## Hobie (Jun 1, 2006)

It looks very much like a spider mite. I find them crawling on concrete all the time, don't know why. Most of the ticks I've seen are brown or black and, you're right, bigger.


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## kawayanan (Aug 11, 2006)

Thanks everyone for the thoughts. I looked around on the web for info and pictures of spider mites (and red spider mites). After looking, the closest looking mites I found on the web so far came up when I did a "red spider mite" image search on google. (google image search on red spider mite) What was most interesting was that when I went to the pages where the pictures where, they were not pictures of spider mites, but rather pictures of predatory mites that can be used to kill spider mites. (Phytosieulus persimilis). The picture that looks the very most like what I saw is on this page. If you search for the date "06/14/2005", you will see a letter that included two pictures. The one on the right looks *exactly* like my mite. (I wish I could post it here, but there might be copyright issues). They seemed to originally think it was a predatory mite, but were corrected that it might be a Erythraeidae Balaustium, which is a pollen eater?

Bugs can definitely be interesting!


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## Brent Bean (Jun 30, 2005)

There isn’t any reason to wonder if you have Varroa ,YOU DO.


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