Fig. 3. Varroa destructor ingests large amounts of honey bee pupae hemolymph during their reproductive stage.

Photos show honey bee pupae that fed as larvae on biostains and V. destructor mites fed on these biostained pupae in brightfield (far left), fluorescence from these samples associated with lipophilic Nile red (staining predominantly fat body; center left) and hydrophilic Uranine (staining predominantly hemolymph; center right), and all three images merged together (far right). Within each representative photo, the specimen on the left is an unlabeled control and the one on the right depicts a representative labeled sample. All scale bars represent 1 mm. Ventral views of honey bee pupae (a–d), V. destructor protonymphs (e–h), deutonymphs (i–l), and foundresses (m–p). Each row of photos is a representative of at least 60 individuals from six independent experiments. The dorsal views of V. destructor mites are shown in Supplementary Fig. 1.