Abstract:
This study was conducted in Metema district, North Western, Amhara Regional State
between October 2019 to March 2020. The aim of this study was to identify the incidence of
Varroa mite in local honey bee colony and to determine Varroa mite infestation rate in local
honey bee colony. The study was carried out in four randomly selected “Kebeles” (Meka,
Lemlem Terara, Kumere Aftiti and Gubay Jejibet) of Metema district based on their
potential. Accordingly, a total of 107beekeepers were randomly selected and interviewed
with semi-structured questionnaire, field observation, group focused discussion and key
informants were used to collect the primary data. From each “Kebeles”24 honey bee
colonies were inspected from 2 apiaries site (8 bee colonies from the hive types and 2
apiaries site from each “Kebeles”) 8 apiaries site and 96 honey bee colonies were diagnosed
from adult bees and brood bees and the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics
including mean, frequency, standard division in forms tabular, graph using SPSS version 23
software. An average of 291 ± 10 and 98.25 ± 2.06wereexamined of adult bees and brood
cells were opened from each bee colony an average of 10 ± 2 (ranging from 9-12) and 8.3
±2.872 (range from 6-12) varroa mites were detected respectively .The result also showed
that the prevalence of Varroa destructor was 82(85.42%) in the brood and 71(73.6%) in the
adult honey bees respectively positively. The prevalence of mite infestation in the brood and
adult bees of the four selected “Kebeles” were 79.17%, 83.33%at Meka, 100%, 79.17%at
Lemlem terara, 75.00%, 62.50%at Kumer Aftiti and 87.50%, 70.83% at Gubay Jejibet
respectively. The high varroa mite infestation on both brood and adult bees at all the four
selected “Kebeles “need to be consider huge threat to beekeeping practice and honey
production as well as crop production of the area unless an appropriate management
practices is followed to minimize the well-known weakening and devastating effect of varroa
mite on the honey bee colonies, the honey production and crop pollination dependent on the
honey bees.