First Evidence of Presence of Varroa underwoodi Mites on Native Apis cerana Colonies in Primorsky Territory of Russia Based on COX1 Gene

The species of genus mites parasitize on the honey bees of genus . Unlike the well-studied and mites, remain less known. According to English language publications, the proven distribution area of colonies covers Nepal, South Korea, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and China, but not Russia even though it had been described morphometrically in Russian language publications in Russia's Primorsky Territory. According to Vavilov's law (1920) of a homologous series, all the species of and have the ability to spill over onto new hosts. Thus, is a potential parasite of that should be carefully studied. In this study, mites in colonies of honey bee subspecies native to Russia's Primorsky Territory are first proven using both morphometry and mitochondrial gene sequencing. The genetic divergence and p-distances between and other species ranged from 7 to 10% and from 0.072 to 0.099, respectively, which matched the intraspecific level of differences. Two identical northernmost samples from Russia's Primorsky Territory and China's Jilin province with GenBank accession number MH205176 were assigned as haplotype China 1 MH205176. The first discovery of in the Primorsky Territory in northern Asia outlined the northern border of its range.