Latest Varroa research, in simple English.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

As explained in the Jan 2018 Bee Culture magazine.

Samuel Ramsey, Ph.D student from Univ. of Maryland has turned up some rather astonishing research on Varroa: in a nutshell, Varroa do not feed on Honey Bee blood as most including myself believed.  Varroa feed on the bees fatbody or liver as commonly called in mammals.  Insects do not have a liver, I make the analogy to keep things simple.

This explains how Varroa can meet the energy requirements to lay an egg 1/3 the size of the mite.  Scientists have been scrambling to figure how Varroa could acquire so much energy from blood which is mostly water.  Now we know, the fat bodies are high in energy so this makes total sense to me.
Blessings

[herbhome]

I also thought it was an important and informative paper.

[Michael Bush]

Those fat bodies are what cause long lived bees over winter.  So that also explains why there are more winter losses from short lived bees.

[Bush_84]

I wonder what future treatments this will bring.

[tjc1]

https://umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/umd-doctoral-student%E2%80%99s-brief-video-his-revolutionary-finding-about-bee-health-wins

Mr. Ramsay presents his ideas in a video

[Acebird]

Mr. Ramsay presents his ideas in a video

This sounds promising.  It is amazing how the tiniest bit of wrong information can cripple a solution for so long.  This correction in belief might be as revolutionary as "the world is flat".